Toronto hospital to double housing program that reduces ER visits

Tenants and staff are photographed outside Dunn House, Canada's first social medicine housing project, in Toronto on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. Evelyn Cheung, front left to right, Keith Hambly, Michelle Walda, Dr. Andrew Boozary, Maggie-Mae Coles, Genevieve Baker, and Avery Ptolemy. Matthew Lihou, rear left to right, and Jason Miles. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

A Toronto hospital network will double its unique permanent housing program for homeless people who frequently visit emergency departments, a model that has seen great success for both residents and the hospital.

The University Health Network will build a near replica of Dunn House, which was built on a parking lot the hospital owns in Toronto’s west end, next door.

Preliminary data shared with The Canadian Press shows the 48 residents who live at Dunn House made nearly 2,000 visits to an ER in the year before moving in. A year later, those same residents visited emergency rooms 52 per cent fewer times, and they also saw a 79 per cent drop in their length of stays when they were admitted.

“These are patients with advanced chronic disease, mental illness and substance use disorders,” said Dr. Andrew Boozary, the director of UHN’s Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine.

“They cycle through emergency departments because our care has failed and because we’ve discharged them back into instability. And if you don’t have a home, you can’t store medications, you can’t recover from surgery, and you can’t stabilize mental health.”

Dunn House is the brain child of Boozary, who first thought of the idea more than seven years ago. “Housing is health,” he said.

The residents say their new homes have transformed their lives and given them hope again.

The expansion will see the hospital build 54 new apartments, with involvement from all levels of government.

The federal government’s Build Canada Homes will spend $21 million to build the project while Ontario will spend $2.6 million annually to run the place, which features direct access to doctors, nurses and a host of other health professionals. The City of Toronto will invest $10 million and lead the delivery of the new homes.

The Dunn House model needs to be scaled up across the country, said federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.

“We need to make it simpler, faster to get these projects off the ground,” he said. “We need to help thousands and thousands of people across Canada find safe, affordable homes.”

The scale is daunting in Ontario alone. Last week, the province’s 444 municipalities released updated data on the number of homeless individuals across Ontario. It found nearly 85,000 Ontarians were homeless in 2025, the vast majority of them living in emergency shelters. 

The problem is getting worse. There were about 6,000 fewer homeless people in 2024. And there are nearly 50 per cent more people without homes in 2025 compared to 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada in 2020.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is bullish on the Dunn House highly supportive housing model. 

“This is the model that breaks the cycle of homelessness, sickness, and despair,” she said. “This is where hope lives.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 20, 2026.

Liam Casey, The Canadian Press