Redesigned Canada Housing Benefit could reduce homelessness by more than half: Report

A redesign of Canada’s Housing Benefit (CHB) could decrease homelessness by more than 60 per cent, according to a new report from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. 

Introduced in 2020 as part of the National Housing Strategy, the Canada Housing Benefit helps low-income renters afford housing through provincial and territorial programs, though eligibility rules and benefit amounts vary across the country.

“It wasn’t big enough. Given the scale of the demand, there wasn’t enough federal investment to scale it in a way that it had an impact on homelessness,” said Tim Richter, CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. 

The report looked at a two-year period modelling the impact on current homelessness data in Edmonton, Toronto and St. John’s, N.L. 

It focused on people whose incomes genuinely leave them unable to afford the basics, and provided them with amounts that would realistically keep them in their homes.

It found that a redesigned benefit could lift 769,000 households above homelessness risk, reducing homelessness by about 63 per cent within two years.

“It wasn’t just the rent that made the difference. It’s once you pay the rent, do you have enough money left over to pay for your other essentials? Richter said.

“It’s the federal government’s single most powerful homelessness prevention tool that’s available to them in the near term,” he said

The modelling is based on the Homelessness Income Cut Off (HICO), a benchmark created by two professors at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

It measures the absolute minimum income an individual or family needs to keep their housing and avoid homelessness after cutting all non-essential spending and exhausting all available resources.

“The measure recognizes that people at highest risk of losing their home are those who have already made extraordinary efforts to maintain housing,” said Ron Kneebone, co-creator of HICO and the scientific director of social policy and health research at  the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

“They have moved into less expensive housing and into crowded housing and they use food banks and other charities to minimize out of pocket expenses. In this way, they reserve their limited incomes for paying rent,” Kneebone said.

If policy measures leave people with an income below HICO, the policy cannot be considered effective at reducing homelessness, he said.

Homelessness in Canada has nearly doubled since the release of Canada’s first 10-year National Housing Strategy in 2017, which is set to expire next year.

The current strategy did not include a clear homelessness strategy, Richter said.

“We know ultimately the solution is housing, more deeply affordable housing, but we also know that’s going to take a lot of time,” he said.

More than 65,000 people are experiencing homelessness on a single night in 75 communities in 2025, with homelessness still 59 per cent higher between 2020 and 2022, according to a federal report last year.

“[The federal government] is very interested in doing something, getting better outcomes on homelessness and seeing reductions in homelessness across the country.”