The Province of Ontario requires Service Managers (SM), such as the Region of Peel, to have a 10 Year Housing and Homelessness Plan. The plan addresses the full housing continuum and sets out goals for increasing housing and ending homelessness with strategies to achieve them. The housing continuum, as shown in the graphic below, represents a range of responses to people’s varying housing needs. Working toward the appropriate mix of housing and service options along the housing continuum helps contribute to the Region’s vision of community for life.

The Peel Housing and Homelessness Plan (PHHP) was developed with input from the community and approved by Regional Council in 2013. This report represents the third annual update and second year of implementation of the PHHP outlining accomplishments by plan objective. In 2016, the Region of Peel spent $176,444,778 to deliver housing and homelessness programs. This consists of federal, provincial and regional funding. A key part of the Region of Peel’s role as SM is planning, funding and monitoring housing and homelessness projects.

Tackling the complex issues of housing and homelessness requires involvement from all stakeholders in the community. 2016 saw progress on affordable housing and homelessness at all levels of government. The federal government took concrete steps toward the development of a National Housing Strategy as well as making some new funding commitments. The Province of Ontario continued to move on the direction established in the renewal of its Long Term Affordable Housing Strategy. This included providing new land use planning tools to municipalities to support the creation of new affordable housing. The Region emphasized its commitment to affordable housing by creating a Term of Council Priority under its new 20 year Strategic Plan to increase affordable housing and has focused efforts on reducing the time to placement for households on the Centralized Wait List. Local municipalities undertook significant work on land use planning policies to support the development of affordable housing, in addition to local municipal housing strategies and activities.