Is London making progress on homelessness or not? Councillor seeks more robust data reporting

Concerns are being raised by council members about the wide swings in the reporting of homeless individuals. CTV London’s Daryl Newcombe reports.

Coun. David Ferreira is calling for more timely reporting and robust data about the state of London’s homelessness crisis to be made available to council and the public.

Ferreira’s motion to the Community and Protective Services (CAPS) Committee seeks to replace the Whole of Community System Response to Homelessness’ Quarterly Reports with a publicly accessible online dashboard of regularly updated information.

“If we were to have this data portal that could be accessed by anybody, including councilors and the public, we would be able to really show that picture a little bit more clearly,” he told CTV News.

Currently, an online report is updated every three months with a snapshot of information generated from the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS), which records people’s interactions with social service agencies and shelters.

London’s most recent results from March 31, 2025, include:

• 1,942 individuals experiencing some form of homelessness (up from 1,595 on December 31)
• 90 people living unsheltered in encampments, not in a shelter (down from 159 on December 31)
• 59 active encampments meeting all of the current guidelines (down from 107 on December 31)

Since the HIFIS system only records data from individuals who accessed services, the actual number of unsheltered Londoners is higher.

Coun. Susan Stevenson says she’d welcome more frequent and robust data about the impact city hall’s strategies are having on the homelessness crisis, “What has changed with the numbers? What’s worked? What doesn’t work? What are we excited about? What are we worried about?”

She believes additional data could help guide council’s future decision-making.

“What other way can we actually measure results, progress, and outcomes? It’s something that Londoners are very interested in,” Stevenson added. “We’re two years into this Whole of Community System Response now - and we need the data.”

Ferreira believes a greater continuity of information would lead to better informed and more timely decision-making.

“Those static snapshots have not necessarily given us a real fulsome and comprehensive outlook [or] the picture of the true realities that we see on the ground,” he said.

Ferreira will present his motion to the CAPS Committee on April 28.

If approved by council in May, city staff would report back before summer with an overview of the content available for the new dashboard and a strategy to launch it.