Canada’s housing crisis is worsening, with housing need and homelessness numbers rising despite government aspirations to reduce them. In this episode of Policy Crimes, Tristan Markle speaks with Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, about two major reports on addressing housing need, which she released in tandem last week.
The first, for the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, sets out human-rights-based housing targets tied to what low-income households can actually afford. The second, for the Maytree Foundation, outlines a Build Canada Homes proposal to finance and deliver housing at scale. Together, they make the case for building 500,000 homes a year, including 200,000 non-market units, half for very-low-income households most at risk of homelessness.
Whitzman proposes treating housing as infrastructure, with about 2% of GDP ($40B annually) invested to create lasting public assets that address housing need. Drawing lessons from Finland, France, Austria, and Singapore, she discusses how Canada could end homelessness in a generation.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Dr. Carolyn Whitzman is a leading Canadian housing and social policy researcher, and Senior Housing Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities. She has shaped federal housing policy through work with the federal Expert Panel on the Homebuilding Industry and UBC’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project. Carolyn is the author of six books, including Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis.
Topics Covered:
Studies referenced:
Production:
Canada’s National Housing Strategy was launched in 2017 with bold promises, including cutting chronic homelessness and core housing need by 50%. But eight years later, the opposite has occurred – with increases of about 50%. So what went wrong?
Dr. Nick Falvo walks us through why the strategy didn’t meet these aspirational goals, and he imagines with us what we could have done, and could still to, make a real dent in homelessness in Canada.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Nick Falvo spent 10 years working on the frontlines, then received his PhD in public policy from Carlton University where he developed and taught one of Canada’s only university-level courses on affordable housing and homelessness. Nick also worked with the Calgary Homeless Foundation as Director of Research and Data, and with the International Journal on Homelessness as Editor-in-Chief, North America.
Topics Covered:
Articles referenced:
Studies referenced:
Production:
In our first three episodes on the Cost of Homelessness, we explored how housing the homeless can often cost less than leaving them in the emergency system. But that's not always the case for every person, program, or place. And saving money isn't the main goal—ending homelessness is about improving lives.
In this episode, we speak with Dr. Eric Latimer, Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and lead economist on Canada’s landmark At Home / Chez Soi Housing First study. He helps us look carefully at the evidence: Housing First dramatically improved housing stability and life outcomes, and over 50% of the program's cost was offset by reductions in emergency service use.
While in this study Housing First didn’t fully "pay for itself", we discuss some fascinating reasons for that, and we explore why we shouldn't always expect cost-neutrality for programs that successfully reduce homelessness.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Dr. Eric Latimer is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University and Research Scientist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. He was lead investigator for the Montreal site of the At Home / Chez So research and demonstration study on homelessness and mental illness and was its lead economist nationally.
Topics Covered:
Studies referenced:
Production:
In this episode, Dr. Cheryl Forchuk — a leading Canadian researcher and mental health nurse — traces how hospitals shifted from rarely discharging patients into homelessness to doing so with alarming frequency.
In the 1980s, a discharge to “no fixed address” was so unusual it set off hospital-wide concern. By the 2000s, it had become routine. Forchuk led landmark studies showing that simple changes at discharge, such as connecting patients to housing advocates and fast-tracking income supports, could prevent homelessness altogether. These interventions not only stabilized lives, but also reduced strain and costs across the healthcare system.
We explore how hospitals can play a huge role in preventing homelessness and why homeless prevention is both cheaper and more effective than relying on emergency responses.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Dr. Cheryl Forchuk is Distinguished University Professor at Western University and Assistant Director at the Lawson Health Research Institute. A registered nurse and researcher, she has spent decades leading collaborative studies on the intersections of homelessness, housing, and mental health. Her work has shaped discharge planning practices, Housing First models, and national policy conversations on treating housing as healthcare. This summer she was appointed to the Order of Canada.
Topics Covered:
Studies referenced:
Production:
Governments often ask whether we can afford to house people experiencing homelessness. Housing policy expert Steve Pomeroy flips the question: how much are we already paying to keep people homeless?
In this episode, he revisits his foundational cost of homelessness research showing supportive housing costs about one-third as much as emergency responses like shelters, hospitals, and police. Pomeroy explains why governments struggle to reinvest savings, points to structural drivers of Canada’s housing crisis, and outlines his Recovery for All plan — a costed roadmap to end homelessness for less than what we already spend on failure.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Steve Pomeroy is one of Canada’s leading housing policy experts, whose early cost of homelessness studies in Toronto (late 1990s), British Columbia (2001), and a landmark 2005 national study helped establish the field in Canada. Beyond this foundational work, he has published widely on Canadian housing economics, affordability, and policy. He is Principal of Focus Consulting Inc., Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC), and Industry Professor at McMaster University.
Topics Covered:
Studies referenced:
Production:
Homelessness is one of the most visible and urgent policy challenges of our time. But what if the way we respond to it — through shelters, emergency rooms, and jails — is more expensive than simply providing stable housing?
In this first season of Policy Crimes, we’re investigating the Cost of Homelessness. And in this pilot episode we talk to Dr. Dennis Culhane, one of the world’s leading homelessness researchers who has laid the foundations of “cost of homelessness” studies.
Get extras and support the show: https://thepublicationcoop.substack.com
Guest: Dr. Dennis Culhane is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. His groundbreaking research has been cited in thousands of studies and has influenced homelessness policy at every level of government — as well as inspiring Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, Million Dollar Murray, helping to popularize the idea of the “cost of homelessness”.
Topics Covered:
Studies referenced:
Production:
