Last week at Bloor and Bay I saw a bedraggled man pick himself up off the sidewalk and nonchalantly jab a needle into his toes. I had to assume this was because the veins in his arms were so shot up that they didn’t work any more.
The sheer normalcy of this reminded me that Toronto is now a world-class city in something our child-like view of ourselves has a hard-time computing. All summer, I saw men sleeping across three seats in a subway car and women with everything they own in two plastic bags. They’re not only in the ravine behind the tennis club, and on the sidewalk outside Tim Hortons, their needles change hands as unselfconsciously as a Presto tap.
A year ago, the unhoused, and especially the homeless addicts, were largely out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. But now even my splendid powers of denial are crumbling at the sight of so many unhappy people trying to survive on our streets. And never forget, Winter is coming.
I trust the same is true for you.
Ironically, the numbers belie what you see with your eyes. The City of Toronto claims that 12,200 people are experiencing homelessness. That’s a 21% decline from 2024. Digging into these numbers between March 2025 and March 2026 the number of encampments on city land fell from 283 to 84, and from 539 structures in November 2024 to 196 by December 2025. During the same period, the City also moved 4,700 people out of shelters and another 370 from the street.
How can this possibly be?
Because the tents came down but the people in them didn’t disappear.
As one outreach worker put it, they’re now living in stairwells, in parking garages, on the TTC overnight, and in ravines. They’re also shooting up in record numbers. Toronto Paramedic Services reports that in April alone this year, there were 485 non-fatal opioid overdoses, the highest monthly count since 2021. and more than double that in the first six months of last year.
One reason is the Ford government cut funding to two supervised consumption sites. These sites also reversed overdoses with naloxone, something that even the librarians at the Toronto Public Library are trained to do. Indeed, they’ve been doing this since 2018.
Mayor Chow’s response has been, by her standards, adequate. The City’s 2026 budget nearly doubled the Rent Bank to $10.8 million. It’s set up to help 2,800 families make their rent in a hard month. The City’s also moved to protect tenants from eviction for 1,000 more families and paid for more city-funded street nurses and social workers in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke. In the long-term, Chow’s 2023 strategy promises 25,000 rent-controlled homes on city-owned land.
These are all laudatory moves and completely inadequate. They do nothing about the man peeing on a streetcar seat while you pretend to read your phone.
Which leads me to say: “Houston, we have a problem.”
Houston?
Indeed, it has an answer to homelessness that we may be wise to copy.
In 2011, Houston had the sixth-largest homeless population in America.
Today, homelessness has been reduced by 63%.. More than 30,000 homeless Houstonians have been housed, with a 90% success rate at keeping them there. Houston also spends less money per person than any other American city. Note, they did it during a Republican administration in Texas, mostly with money from Washington.
Houston’s strategy consists of two fairly predictable parts.
The first is “Housing First.” You give people an apartment. Not a shelter bed, not a bed contingent on being clean and sober or a mental-health appointment. A real apartment with keys and a lease. The University Health Network (UHN), led by emerg doctor Andrew Boozary, are doing this now. The counselling and detox and job training come after, and they’re voluntary.
Finland figured this out long ago. It has no homeless problem because it has no homeless people. The Finns believe a home conveys dignity, which our current system certainly does not.
The second strategy is coordination. This sounds vague and abstract. But it’s what makes the whole thing work. The City of Houston, Harris County, and two neighbouring counties and more than 100 non-profits operate under a single umbrella called The Way Home. Say you’re homeless in Houston. You can now walk into any one of these 100+ non-profits and ask for housing, and your request and file go into a shared database. A case manager working from a single dashboard on her desktop scans every available bed and apartment in the region. This is exactly like when you book a flight on Expedia. A non-profit pops up on the screen with an available unit. It has to take you in. If this all sounds natural and not-news, remember the first rule of bureaucracy is, never talk to the other agencies. Now, they can’t afford not to.
Toronto has the same tools that Houston does, more or less: federal dollars, provincial shelter money, a city outreach team, hundreds of non-profits and the idea for Housing First on paper. What it doesn’t have is Houston’s scarily common sense infrastructure: one intake, one database, one dashboard, one accountable body, and a Mayor willing to tell every agency to plug in or step aside.
I would never counsel Mayor Chow to get on a plane and go to Houston. She just needs to get on a streetcar in Toronto to see that what we have now is not a housing policy, but a symptom of what happens when we have one that doesn’t work for anyone.
Meanwhile…
1. Explore the Northwest Passage with us.
In August 2028, Jean and I are taking friends on a trip to the top of the world, and the holiday of your family’s lifetime. 20 days, one expedition ship, two helicopters, many expert speakers. Read all about it here — and learn all about it at our two information receptions on Oct. 14 and 21.
2. A woman of substance. Diana Fox Carney. And a man of substance: Stephen Harper. And Steve Paikin and Carol Off talk substantively about the frontlines of sovereignty.
And Michael Ignatieff on How China Views America, and the petition to get the National Gallery of Canada to finally exhibit even one of Robert Bateman’s paintings. And for those who think the TTC needs work, thank your lucky stars you don’t live in London.
3. Dance and sing. The Lior Tavori Dance Company performs for the first time in Canada with Crust. One night only: October 1, at the Meridian Arts Centre: Lyric Theatre. Readers get a 15% discount on $115 and $135 seats. Use Promocode RAMSAY. Tickets here.
Plus The Little Violin Shop on the Prairie. And why do we teach music at all? You can also catch some great concert photos from the 80s, by private appointment. Plus clarifying the void. And finally, I’m not one to say things like “This is the most insane performance you’ll ever see”, but…
4. Metabolizing hard emotions. A user’s guide to the world of feelings. And if you hate getting jabbed by a needle, this is for you. Plus, where can you get the deadly sheeppox virus? From thumbing through ancient manuscripts. And who best to fight tomorrow’s plagues? Katalin Karikó, the woman who halted today’s plagues. Finally, it seems the fear of fear is worse than fear itself, especially when discussing how AI can destroy the world.
5. Watering down. In Britain, the Solicitors’ Qualifying Exam has been made easier, with fewer questions and more time to answer them. Students complain the existing one discriminates against them because, well, because it’s hard. Speaking of, here are 14 reasons why robotics actually is hard. And what demolishing 15 buildings at once looks like. Finally, what the world will be once AI either runs everything or has killed us all off.
6. Long lists and short. First, the 2026 Tom Wolfe Prize Short-list. Then 10 of the most exotic and interesting restaurants on earth. And connecting them, why literary travel is surging. Plus a very long marble run. Finally, meet John Goddard, the world’s most serious bucket-lister.
Oh….and this…… Ben McNally Books is starting a new gathering on the last Friday of every month where booklovers meet other booklovers, all in Ben’s great store. Details here and tickets here.
7. Gutenberg did not invent type. In Germany. In 1450. That happened…400 years before… in China. And here’s Dolly Parton on the virtues of sitting in graveyards. Plus the iPhone photo awards and some stunning shots from Artemis II, and TVO’s upcoming documentaries. And if you’re a fungi, here’s your mycorrhizal infrastructure map.
8. What if you see yourself as a project? Why the examined life is not the optimized life. And how universities should prepare business founders, from the minds at Y Combinator. And how to build a fine-grained city, that is, one built from lots of small, connected and diverse places. And now you can track your origin myth all the way back to…the dawn of time. Indeed, you can sign on for an app that asks “Are you dead yet?”
9. Opening nights. First, the Toronto International Festival of Authors. On September 22, TIFA presents An Evening With R.F. Kuang, the American fantasy novelist whose bestsellers include The Poppy War Trilogy and Babel. The music season at Koerner Hall is also here. The Canadian Opera Company season opened on Friday with La Traviata. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra season opens when Yuja Wang Plays Prokofiev on Sept. 24, 26 and 27. And the National Ballet of Canada opens its 75th season with Romeo and Juliet on October 31. Yes, Hallowe’en.
10. Three strikes. Dan Ariely is one of business psychology’s great pioneers and popularizers. In 2008 the Duke University professor’s Predictably Irrational, sold over a million copies and spawned eight more books on similar themes. But it turns out his experiments were, to put it kindly, flawed. Wikipedia wrote the indictment: “Since 2021, the accuracy of Ariely’s studies has been called into question, with two articles retracted, two expressions of concern, several replication failures and allegations of data manipulation and fraud.”
Then this month, Retraction Watch reported even more. (Their free newsletter is a feast of intellectual chicanery, by the way).
Note to Readers: The next issue of Omnium-Gatherum will land in your Inbox on Saturday, October 3.
Guaranteed 100% written by Bob Ramsay, human.