University of Calgary professor Ronald Kneebone at the downtown campus on Feb. 26.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
While economists and advocates have long argued that social assistance rates across Canada are not even enough to keep people out of poverty, new research has found they are often not enough to keep people out of homelessness.
A report published by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy provides calculations for what the researchers call the Homelessness Income Cut-Off (HICO) – the bare minimum amount of money needed to maintain housing after paring back all possible spending.
In many big cities and even small towns, social assistance rates are falling below these worst-case-scenario benchmarks.
This should signal an “impending crisis,” Ronald Kneebone, the study’s main author, said in an interview.
“What we say to governments is: these people are fighting like hell to hang on to their housing by using food banks, by using charities. And even with them fighting like hell, your social assistance income remains insufficient for them to remain housed.”
Across the country, communities of all sizes are grappling with surging rates of homelessness amid a national crisis of housing affordability.
In Ontario alone, more than 30,000 people on social assistance were homeless as of July, 2025, according to data released in January by anti-poverty think tank Maytree – an increase of 72 per cent since July, 2019. Homelessness among those who have relied on Ontario Works – the province’s main social assistance program – for more than a year surged by 136 per cent.
In Toronto for 2023, for example, they determined the HICO for a single adult sharing a two-bedroom apartment was $18,186 after tax, for the year. A single adult doesn’t even receive half that amount through Ontario Works.
Prof. Kneebone emphasized that the HICO is not meant to serve as a how-to guide – the researchers are not suggesting people should have to move or rely on charity in order to keep their housing. He said the researchers are simply hoping to give the government a practical benchmark to determine what people realistically need to survive.
Typically, governments measure their policies against the poverty line (formally known as the Market Basket Measure). But Prof. Kneebone says this is an irrelevant way to gauge homelessness risk, because by its very definition, the poverty line accounts for secure and appropriate housing and a basic yet nutritious diet without having to rely on food banks or charities.
Someone living at the HICO, on the other hand, is teetering on the edge, with no wiggle room left in their budget. It provides a far more targeted metric for policy makers to work with, he says.
“I’ve been working on the issue of homelessness for a long time, and something that’s always been missing is some measure against which policy makers could gauge the effectiveness of their anti-homelessness strategy,” Prof. Kneebone said. “If you’re serious about dealing with homelessness, you have to make sure that people have at least this amount of income. And you know what? Social assistance income doesn’t meet it.”
Small and remote towns across Canada are struggling with a surge in homelessness
An earlier iteration of their research provided HICOS for individuals and families in seven cities across Canada. Montreal was the only city where the HICO was below the social assistance rate in part because of social assistance policy reforms introduced by Quebec.
The new expanded report analyzes 50 communities, ranging in population from 9,000 to five million.
And while big cities are typically thought to be most expensive to live in, the researchers found that the HICO for small towns can often wind up being comparable, owing to fewer supports and charities for people to rely on.
The new report also compares each community’s HICO to its median income, revealing it is not only those on social assistance who are at grave risk of homelessness. In small communities in particular, the report found that the HICO for a single parent family is nearly 60 per cent of the median income, which leaves those earning less in a precarious position.
“There’s a lot of people on edge,” Prof. Kneebone said. “We’ve got to recognize that this is happening more and more. So we need to ensure that people have the income capacity to keep themselves alive, basically. To keep themselves housed.”
Alexi White, Maytree’s director of systems change, said the HICO is a helpful estimation of social assistance rates’ inadequacy across the board. He said the relationship between income security and homelessness is “very underappreciated.”
The federal government’s main strategy to combat rising rates of homelessness and a years-long housing and affordability crisis has been to invest in building new affordable housing, through the Build Canada Homes project – which Mr. White says is desperately needed.
“But it’s also true that that’s unfortunately likely a decades-long exercise,” he said. “I think what the HICO does is it brings attention to the fact that actually income is what keeps most people in their homes.”
Social assistance programs, he says, “are by far the largest housing program in our country, because that’s what allows over a million households across the country to pay rent every month.”
Prof. Kneebone says the research emphasizes how unique each community’s challenges are, and the importance of empowering individual cities and towns to address their own issues.
“Homelessness is a very localized problem. The reasons people are homeless in Calgary are not always the same as the reason people are homeless in Montreal or Halifax. And so when you’re thinking about policy solutions, it’s a mistake that we can have a cookie-cutter solution that will work everywhere.”