The Slaight Family Housing Lab will address urgent health crises and chronic homelessness by providing immediate relief and pathways to permanent, stable housing.Daria Perevezentsev/UWGT
For people experiencing homelessness, a trip to the hospital is rarely the end of a health crisis.
When patients are discharged following treatment, many return to the same circumstances that may have made them sick in the first place. Heather McDonald, president and CEO of United Way Greater Toronto, remembers one such instance from early on in her career.
A man experiencing homelessness had received excellent care in hospital, with surgeons inserting a colostomy bag. Once stable, he was discharged; soon after, he was seen cleaning his colostomy bag in the Don River.
“This is real, and this is why life expectancy for people who are homeless is cut short by a decade compared to the average Canadian,” says McDonald.
Health and housing are inextricably linked, and too complex for any one group to tackle alone, McDonald says. Governments, hospitals, and the social sector are often working in silos instead of combining their efforts.
The Slaight Family Foundation is helping address that gap with a $25-million gift.
For Gary Slaight, president and CEO of The Slaight Family Foundation, the urgency of Toronto’s homelessness crisis made the decision to contribute simple. Since launching in 2008, the foundation has invested more than $300-million in initiatives supporting healthcare, at-risk youth, international development and other causes.
Slaight hopes the donation will not only help address Toronto’s homelessness crisis, but also encourage other donors to step forward with similar support.
“Having more people involved, together, is far more effective than having fewer people involved apart,” he says. “We hope that it will inspire others who have the fortune of having some wealth, to find a way to help others get through.”
Announced in March, the $25-million funding aims to better connect housing, healthcare and community services for people experiencing homelessness. It will do this through a major partnership between United Way Greater Toronto – the area’s largest non-government funder of community services – and St. Michael’s Hospital’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Canada’s largest research centre focused on health equity.
The initiative, called the Slaight Family Housing Lab, has two main goals: respond to urgent health and housing crises facing people living on the street today, and tackle the root causes of chronic homelessness by helping people move into permanent housing.
The lab is sorely needed, with Toronto seeing an increase in homelessness. According to the City of Toronto’s 2024 Street Needs Assessment, an estimated 15,400 people were experiencing homelessness in the city – more than double the roughly 7,300 counted in April 2021.
“So many see people on the street experiencing homelessness, and they wonder, ‘Isn’t there something that can be done?’” says Dr. Stephen Hwang, a physician and director of St. Michael’s Hospital’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions. “With this initiative, we can break through and say, ‘working together, with this incredibly generous, transformative gift, we can make a difference.’”
Dr. Hwang has spent much of his 35-year career studying the connection between homelessness and health. One landmark study he co-led tested the ‘Housing First’ model, pairing stable housing with intensive support for people experiencing homelessness across five Canadian cities. The study was more than 80 per cent effective in permanently ending homelessness, Dr. Hwang says.
The Slaight Family Housing Lab will apply that research on a broader scale across Toronto. The Lab will fund mobile teams that meet people where they are – in encampments, on sidewalks or in shelters – and help them navigate everything from medical care and mental-health support to ID replacement and housing applications.
“The aim is that they’re permanently housed, rather than that their suffering is simply eased for one night,” says Dr. Hwang.
Employing both health professionals and community workers, these ‘wraparound’ teams will stay connected with people over the long term to help them remain housed.
“We are going to be the ‘whatever it takes’ team for people who are outside and homeless, to deliver what they need to get to the next step in moving off the street,” McDonald says.
The first phase of the project, launching this summer, will focus on helping at least 300 people currently living on the street or in encampments move into housing, with support from frontline partners. Backed by MAP’s research expertise, the Lab will track outcomes such as housing stability and health service use, using the findings to refine the model and scale effective approaches across Toronto and beyond.
For McDonald, the Slaight Family Housing Lab is a “trailblazing model” for how to address complex societal challenges. “My hope is that it inspires other donors to support the issue of homelessness in this way – a comprehensive, coming-together response.”
By 2030, the lab aims to have improved housing and health outcomes for tens of thousands of people currently experiencing homelessness.
“While this challenge is complex, we can make real, visible progress in a way that the people of Toronto will see and feel,” Dr. Hwang says.
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with United Way Greater Toronto. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.