A fast-track housing program has helped thousands of homeless Torontonians. So why is the city cutting it in half?

Officials say it’s curtailing the program — for it’s own good. Updated June 9, 2025 at 2:31 p.m.

By Victoria Gibson, Affordable Housing Reporter Toronto Star, June 9, 2025

A review of a rapid housing initiative concentrated too many people with high-needs in certain public complexes — places like Dan Harrison Community Complex, a building where city hall has long been aware of complex social challenges. ________________________________________

A program that fast-tracked thousands of Torontonians from encampments and shelters into public housing is being cut in half — as officials say it concentrated too heavily in certain locations, exacerbating social challenges without adequate supports.

The Rapid Rehousing Initiative, a partnership between the city and its public housing agency, was launched in 2020 to make better use of vacant community housing units to move people out of encampments and emergency shelters.

Since then, it has housed 2,872 people in 1,904 furnished units. Toronto Community Housing Corp. (TCHC) sees it overall as a success, noting the majority of tenants remained housed at least two years, with two per cent evicted and three either moving or passing away, according to their data. However, TCHC officials have said the program initially relied heavily on locations with higher levels of vacancy, which are often areas with more social challenges — places such as the Dan Harrison Community Complex in Moss Park. Profiled by the Star last year, the complex has a higher concentration of tenants struggling with mental health and other challenges, but also more open units; in 2020, nearly eight per cent were vacant versus a TCHC-wide rate closer to two per cent.

“That’s where we had the highest vacancy rates, so during COVID we used that as an opportunity,” chief operating officer Nadia Gouveia said in a meeting this year. But that approach sometimes magnified existing challenges, she explained.

The answer TCHC has now settled on involves reducing the program’s targets from 350 units a year to 175, while spreading the units across more locations; focusing exclusively on applicants with lower levels of need; and increasing the services available to tenants in high-needs areas.

“We should be setting the tone on really, really how to successfully house individuals,” Ashley Fontaine, manager of complex tenancies for TCHC, said in an interview with the Star. “And it’s OK if we need to pivot.”

Sarah Ovens, a case manager at Moss Park’s All Saints Church Community Centre, said the program’s launch felt like a miracle in some ways. She saw clients living in encampments offered homes within months, versus years on the city’s regular wait-list. It was an opportunity so coveted that people moved their tents to more high-profile locations with hopes of upping their chances.

But when her clients living with serious mental health and addiction challenges are placed in already higher needs communities, “it’s just kind of chaos,” Ovens said, noting it could open the door to more conflicts between tenants.

In a public meeting earlier this year, city hall’s interim housing secretariat director, Doug Rollins, said the city had faced a number of complaints about the program. The review was urged by TCHC’s community safety advisory committee, the agency says, after staff noticed a rise in mental health challenges, anti-social behaviour and safety concerns in areas associated with the fast-track program.

Part of their new overhaul is to focus more on families with kids, though a more limited supply of larger units presents a barrier. So far in 2025, TCHC says 80 of the 179 people housed through 82 units have been children.

As of August, TCHC has partnered with social agencies to embed more services in five targeted buildings. It also plans to hire its own team to oversee the program, including community service co-ordinators to make monthly visits with tenants and try to proactively identify issues.

In an email, Fontaine raised a past case of a tenant housed through the program, who soon after lost a friend to an overdose. In their grief, she said they began smashing objects, increasing their own substance use, and getting into conflicts with other tenants. Rather than let the case worsen until they faced an eviction, she hoped the new model could help identify challenges earlier and connect the person with supports such as grief counselling.

Ovens understands TCHC’s motivation in narrowing the program’s scope. In some cases, she believes her clients with complex cases would have struggled in any location, not solely when placed in higher-needs communities. “I can honestly understand the feeling that like, let’s try to get some bigger households and people with lower needs, because with those people all they really need is an apartment. Get them an apartment and they’ll get back on their feet,” she said.

Still, she worries about what happens now to those living outside with more complex needs. “Are they just back out of luck?”

TCHC says under the new rules, individuals with moderate to high needs will be referred to Toronto’s supportive housing wait-list. To Fontaine, it’s a change aimed at improving conditions for tenants and communities as a whole. “The year of 2025, I’m calling it the year of transition,” she said.