Mayoral and council hopefuls have made Hamilton’s ongoing struggle with homelessness and out-of-reach housing costs a focus of campaign pledges as the Oct. 26 municipal vote approaches.
The wide-reaching symptoms of the crunch are as stark as ever: people living outside, shelters packed to capacity, renters strained to afford groceries and would-be buyers shut out of the market.
While all three levels of government have a hand in housing, the massive file is increasingly falling to cash-strapped municipalities.
Consider that this year, the city expects to pick up $130.4 million of Hamilton’s total $204.8-million housing and homelessness file.
It’s widely recognized that municipalities alone can’t solve a housing crisis that is decades in the making.
So as the election enters the home stretch, here’s a look at the city’s challenges — and what it can and can’t do to offer solutions.
Social housing
For starters, social housing — a responsibility the province downloaded to cities more than 20 years ago — represents a colossal $104-million annual expenditure for Hamilton.
That goes toward the operations and repairs for a portfolio of about 13,000 units between roughly 40 housing providers, the biggest of which is CityHousing with more than 7,000 homes.
Most agree Hamilton needs more affordable housing, but just maintaining CityHousing’s aging stock in itself is a colossal endeavour.
More subsidized housing requires more help from upper levels of government. However, despite recently renewed federal attention after decades of retreat, government funding for the sector isn’t what it used to be.
“The government’s not funding new deeply affordable units,“ Sean Botham, CityHousing’s chief portfolio officer, told The Spectator earlier this year.
As such, CityHousing has shifted its focus to include a “spectrum of incomes“ in new projects.
In recent years, Hamilton has tried to leverage its own land and partner with the private sector on projects. Among the examples are the demolished and redeveloped Roxborough Park townhouse complex in the east end and Jamesville, its long-delayed counterpart in the North End.
Non-profit projects
Hamilton has an energetic cadre of non-profit housing providers that aim to build 5,000 affordable units by 2030 — a goal that will require hundreds of millions of dollars.
Indwell, Good Shepherd, the YWCA, Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes and Sacajawea Non-Profit Housing are among the members of the Hamilton is Home coalition.
No one expects the city to pick up the entire tab for the coalition’s projects, but the hope is for local government to help via grants, waived development fees and municipal land provided at nominal rates.
Those are council commitments non-profits can show when they vie for federal and provincial funding or loans to advance their projects, which can also hinge on their own capital and private financing.
This past term, the city created a dedicated “housing secretariat“ to receive and evaluate pitches for municipal help according to set criteria.
In November, the secretariat announced it had earmarked $58.4 million for 30 projects in a three-year investment plan expected to deliver 2,100 units.
That’s promising, but consider the “hole in the bucket“ — a term housing expert Steve Pomeroy has adapted to describe how Hamilton loses 23 affordable units in the private market for every one it builds.
That dynamic, driven by rising rents, has made for a loss of nearly 16,000 apartments that rented for under $750 over a 10-year stretch.
Municipal land
Just acquiring land, which alone can represent up to 25 per cent of overall costs, poses a high hurdle for non-profit projects.
Recognizing this, the city sold Victoria Park Community Homes, another coalition member, a 7.2-acre former school property for $5 million — about half of its market value.
That gave the non-profit a big leg-up on a 200-plus project that’s now under construction on Caledon Avenue on the Mountain and expected to welcome residents in 2027.
In the same vein, city staff have been tasked with providing other surplus properties to affordable housing providers at “nominal” rates, whether through leases or sales.
But that process has been drawn out and, in some cases, controversial.
One such property in downtown Stoney Creek has sparked heated political debate, with local residents crying foul over the loss of municipal parking spots for the planned affordable housing.
Supportive housing
You may have heard candidates talk about how Hamilton needs more supportive housing to get people off the street, but not so much about how to expand that stock.
That could be because it’s not just about bricks and mortar, but also money to fund services related to health, psychosocial, meals and other daily-living needs.
The city believes the province should fund such services and is advocating for more help. But in some cases, Hamilton has filled the void, albeit reluctantly.
The city spends $4.8 million a year for Indwell’s operation of CityHousing’s 24-unit building downtown on King William Street and Good Shepherd’s 73-unit Dorothy Day Place on Arkledun Avenue just south of the core.
Empty buildings
Why can’t the city just house people in empty buildings?
A commonly suggested candidate is the long-vacant Sir John A. Macdonald high school downtown on York Boulevard, said housing services director Michelle Baird.
The first barrier is the public school board owns that property, not the city, she noted.
But, even if it was available, the shuttered school — and other long-vacant buildings — aren’t necessarily up to snuff.
“In many of these older buildings, really it’s a full rebuild, as opposed to simply moving people in the front door,“ Baird said.
And she notes the operational costs that come with running programs is a significant factor.
“For people experiencing homelessness, it’s not a matter of just finding a building, but rather, finding the annual support dollars to wrap around people in order to keep them housed.“
Income support
Income can’t be overlooked when it comes to solving the housing crunch, experts say.
Income assistance is the cornerstone of government-funded, deeply affordable housing, Pomeroy observes.
“If you say to somebody you should only spend 30 per cent of income for rent, you’re saying we need to reserve 70 per cent of your income for non-housing expenditures.“
But Canada has been “trying to solve a poverty problem with a housing program, which is absolutely the most expensive way to solve the poverty problem,“ Pomeroy continued.
That’s why raising lagging provincial social-assistance rates to cover the cost of rent and employing programs like guaranteed basic income are key, advocates say.
The city cannot control social assistance rates. But to try to bridge gaps, Hamilton dedicates millions each year to supplements to help people afford rent and stayed housed.
“It’s far more expensive for us to try to house people once they’re unhoused as opposed to try to keep people where they are,“ the city’s Baird told The Spectator.
The city also receives allocations from the province of the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB), a “portable“ subsidy meant to top up people’s incomes so they can cover market rent.
But since COHBs can take time and effort to organize for people struggling with homelessness, the city has a two-year subsidy called Rent Secure to tide people over.
Tenant support
Hamilton also uses various tools to try to prevent homelessness and preserve affordability.
One such lever is Hamilton’s 2025 bylaw that’s designed to ward off bad-faith attempts to force tenants out for renovations, or “renovictions.“
The practice was seen as contributing to the eroding stock of affordable rentals in the private market with owners able to jack rates after so-called “legacy“ tenants, who benefited from rent control, were forced to leave.
The program has been criticized by a local association representing landlords as another layer of red tape that’s making property owners pull units from the market.
But tenants who successfully fought a renoviction bid before the province’s rental-dispute body told The Spectator the new bylaw would protect them from more attempts.
“Eventually, we would have run out of resources to fight it,” said Amanda Dick, a member of Hamilton ACORN, an advocacy group focused on tenant rights.
“In my case, it saved myself and my neighbours from being displaced, and it’s like 30 units of affordable housing that were preserved.”
The city’s new vacant unit tax is another tool meant to ease Hamilton’s housing crunch by filling otherwise empty homes with tenants. Proceeds from the one per cent tax are to be put toward the city’s affordable housing efforts.
But the new program has spurred debate with some city councillors arguing its rollout has been marred by confusion and questioning just how much it will affect the overall housing landscape. Some candidates have suggested ending the tax.
Zoning reform
City planners are in the midst of a Hamilton-wide update of its residential zones — so land-use details like height, density, setbacks and types of homes.
Relaxed permissions can lead to more housing per acre, ideally helping to ease the housing crunch.
Hiked density can also lead to smaller homes known as the elusive “missing middle“ that are cheaper to buy — and spark pushback from some in low-density neighbourhoods.
Prezoning parts of the city, as Hamilton has done, to include higher “as of right“ permissions can eliminate the need for lengthy and costly development approvals.
While planning policy and development approvals is in the city’s wheelhouse, municipal officials have complained about provincial legislation big-footing policy and decisions to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
Development charges
If the city can’t lower the construction costs and market prices directly, it can still offer relief on development charges, which can add millions to multiplex projects.
Affordable, rental housing and secondary units already enjoy such fee exemptions, but the private development sector has long pushed for breaks as well.
And, last year, in response to those pleas, Hamilton moved to reduce development charges by 20 per cent amid a housing market slump and United States tariffs.
Cities rely on development charges to help pay for infrastructure to service growth and must make up for any discounts through local taxes or rates — if not funding from senior governments.
On that note, more recently, the city went further, agreeing to eliminate the charges altogether for three years in exchange for $572 million in federal-provincial infrastructure cash.
The West End Home Builders’ Association, a local industry group, praised the move as a way to help spur construction, support businesses, save jobs and lower prices, which is a point of contention for critics of developer fee relief.
Hamilton is Home