The Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness (OAEH) is a network of communities, agencies, and individuals dedicated to preventing and ending homelessness in Ontario.
What We Do
Bringing together civil society, sectoral leaders, and people with lived and living experience to learn from each other and work together toward the prevention and ending of homelessness in Ontario.
Leading policy and system change advocacy.
Identifying and mobilizing on systemic challenges to realizing the right to housing.
Conducting research on systemic and ongoing housing precarity and homelessness issues.
Expanding the impact of OAEH through community-based initiatives.
OAEH Statement regarding the Encampment Evictions in Barrie (September 2025) The Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness stands with local advocates in Barrie. Residents in yesterday’s eviction on Mulcaster Street were not offered housin g, only temporary shelter, sometimes far from supports. Moving people around disrupts the connections they rely on and does not solve homelessness. There are only two ways to end homelessness: prevent it in the first place, and provide housing (with supports as needed) for those who do not have any. Evictions make homelessness less visible, but they do not make it disappear. Housing, not displacement, is the solution.
OAEH response to the 2023 Budget (March 2023) Housing is a human right and everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. While we work toward that goal, the Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness is pleased to see this significant investment in homelessness services from the Government of Ontario. This is a much-needed increase in funding to help address the homelessness crisis affecting municipalities throughout the province. Our hope is that the provincial government partners with municipalities and service providers to help the most vulnerable citizens in our communities and invest in deeply affordable and supportive housing.
OAEH Statement regarding the Appointment of Ontario's Housing Affordability Task Force (December 2021) While we welcome the appointment of a Housing Affordability Task Force, the Ontario Alliance to Homelessness (OAEH) is troubled to see a glaring omission of those who understand homelessness, core housing need, or social housing. (With the exception of Justin Marchand). Housing is a human right, as outlined in international treaties since 1948 and enshrined in Canadian law more recently in 2019. This means that government efforts to address access to housing must by law prioritize those who are currently unhoused. The people most vulnerable to the dangers of homelessness must have a voice at tables such as these.
The OAEH is a group of key leaders, thinkers, subject matter experts and people with lived experience of housing precarity, poverty, and homelessness. Our mission is to mobilize a broad-based, grassroots civil society network to fully realize the long-term goal of ending homelessness in Canada. Our most important stakeholders are those who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness. We have a provincial scope and our Steering Committee and partners are leaders in the homelessness, housing, and poverty sectors throughout Ontario.
We call on the Government of Ontario to appoint additional members to the Housing Affordability Task Force who specialize in the complexities of housing for Ontarians most at risk of, or with experience of, homelessness, in order to more fully address the systemic barriers that keep housing out of reach for so many.
OAEH Statement regarding Toronto Police Response to Homeless Encampments (June 2021) The Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness condemns the actions of the City of Toronto and the Toronto Police Services in ‘clearing’ the encampment at Trinity Bellwoods Park on June 22nd. There is no context in which state violence against those experiencing homelessness is part of a functional solution to preventing and ending homelessness.
We point municipalities across Ontario to the recommendations of the World Health Organization to leave encampments during the pandemic, and to the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing to treat all people as rights holders. This action was harmful and shameful and we must change our response from criminalizing people experiencing homelessness, to ensuring that all people have access to safe, affordable housing.
