*Please note that we launched this campaign on October 27, 2025. We have received some responses from City Officials, including Clara Freire and Kale Brown. To see a summary of what City of Ottawa representatives responded, and why their claims fail to meet our demands, see below.

This past year, the City of Ottawa closed the emergency overnight shelters held at Bernard Grand Maître Arena, Dempsey Community Centre, Heron Road Community Centre, and the Graham Spry Building under the premise of having created capacity within Ottawa’s existing shelter system.

Ottawa’s shelters have approximately 950 beds and Ottawa’s homeless population is nearing 3,000. There are drop-in facilities, including HART Hubs, Belong Ottawa, and Centre 507, but they do not offer places to sleep. Their hours and capacity are also limited and can be inconsistent.

The City’s 10 Year Housing and Homelessness Plan set out to have “no one unsheltered” by the end of 2024. Kale Brown, Ottawa’s Manager of Homelessness Programs and Shelters, insists there is a warm bed for everyone. However, front-line workers and unhoused neighbors know that most of the resources celebrated by the City are simply not enough. In addition, as of October 2025, Ottawa Public Health irresponsibly lists outdated overflow shelters that have been permanently closed. There are currently no clear, dignified solutions to ensure that nobody suffers or dies in the cold.

Local politicians think they will solve homelessness in Ottawa by quoting the City’s false promises instead of listening to the realities of unhoused folks, their loved ones, and front-line workers on the ground. We urgently need multiple warming centres that:

• Remain open from the 20th of December 2025 to the 20th of March of 2026 (staffed by experienced and trauma-informed workers, operated 24 hours 7 days a week)
• Have sleep capacity in the form of beds, cots, or mats (making people sleep on chairs is inhumane)
• Apply the City’s own shelter standards of equity and inclusion to these facilities
• Have several accessible locations (with transport available for service users)
• Leave no one behind (which means no one turned away)

This winter, without proper emergency solutions in place, our unhoused community members and loved ones will continue to suffer serious injuries or die.

No more unloading of a governmental responsibility onto non-profit and precariously funded organizations. No more empty talk. No more excuses. We need concrete actions and a guaranteed winter plan by November 26th 2025 so we can trust a plan will be operational in time as the weather gets colder.

Join us on Wednesday, November 19 at 4 pm to demand an immediate winter plan and a commitment to opening warming centres from the City of Ottawa. We will meet at 110 Laurier Avenue West, by the Dorothy O'Connell Monument to Anti-Poverty Activism located in the south lawn of Ottawa City Hall.

Enter your information into the Action Network tool to send a petition email to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, General Manager of Community and Social Services Clara Freire, Director of Housing and Homelessness Kale Brown, and City Councillors. The tool will ask you for an address. If you don’t have one, or don’t want to share your address, please list the address of a nearby community health centre or library.

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*Update on responses received from City Officials (November 6, 2025).

So far, we’ve heard back from Clara Freire (General Manager, Community and Social Services), Kale Brown (Director of Housing and Homelessness Services), Rawlson King (Councillor, Rideau-Rockcliffe), and Riley Brockington (Councillor, River Ward). Here is a summary of what they said, and why their answers fail to meet our demands. Feel free to copy our points below in your answers to City Officials:

What the City of Ottawa claims

• Emergency Overflow Centres (PD-EOCs) closed to focus on an Integrated Transitional Housing Strategy (ITHS), primarily at Queen St., St. Joseph Boulevard, and the YMCA. The system, they claim, now includes 700 new permanent beds, which is “sufficient numbers to close the Physical Distancing-Emergency Overflow Centres previously operating out of city facilities” (ITHS section 2.1).
• 100 beds were added to the shelter system. There might be an emergency overflow space available at St. Joseph’s community room (with space for 40 people), which remains under renovations, and 250 Lanark Avenue (up to 60 clients) “if demand exceeds available capacity” (Rawlson King, in response to our campaign).
• Shepherds of Good Hope operates a drop-in at 216 Murray Street seven days a week, 16 hours daily and Centre 507 now provides 24/7 low-barrier overnight warming and respite services. The City has “also invested in expanded outreach services to support those choosing to remain outside.” In addition, they claim, “outreach workers provide transportation to help residents access shelter spaces” (Clara Freire & Kale Brown).

What this actually means

• We can’t trust the numbers: 700 permanent beds created is not a negligible achievement, but these are uniquely transitional housing placements that require a referral, not for emergency stays. Most of the transitional housing providers listed above are reserved for asylum seekers and newcomers. This is extremely important work, but the likelihood that these services will be providing relief across the shelter system to anyone who does not fit their mandate is very low.
• The services cited by the City cannot meet the need as it is. The City has invested in existing Ottawa shelters to take an increased capacity of non-permanent overnight stays in their common areas. This means that service users have to line up at inconsistent times across shelters every night, only to get turned away if full. We asked to have shelter standards apply to all sleeping arrangements. Providing overcrowded, unguaranteed spaces in shelters already struggling to serve their existing clientele as an answer is not enough.
• Centre 507, the only 24/7 drop-in service named by the City, is only accessible by stairs, making it unusable for many people with mobility needs. At this location, which indeed provides much needed services in our city, people are expected to rest on chairs and reportedly woken up if they attempt to sleep lying down. These drop-in spaces mentioned by the City are operating at maximum capacity. What happens when these spaces are overcrowded and reach fire code limit? What happens to unhoused people who are restricted from accessing the one or two only spaces available?
• There are only two transport emergency services that outreach workers can call. These two emergency transport services are operating at maximum capacity. The Salvation Army van is not wheelchair accessible and is not able to transport people who have luggage with them. The ANCHOR van can only transport people already within the centre town area.

Our demands are clear and doable
We asked for 24/7 staffed warming sites from December 20 to March 20 that have actual places to sleep, not just chairs, and multiple locations that meet the City’s own shelter standards of accessibility and equity.

The City’s responses do not meet these standards. Referencing a 10-year plan does not address the urgent reality of people sleeping outside in freezing temperatures now. Saying that a transitional housing strategy exists does not prove that the City’s resources are functional or addressing any of our concerns.

If the City has maintained its Licence Agreement with the Federal Government to operationalize the 250 Lanark Ave. overflow facility, why wait to open and staff it adequately until it is too late? Why are the City of Ottawa’s Winter services response and Ottawa Public Health Cold Weather Assistance websites not updated?

We want to hear from you:
If you or someone you know has experience navigating the shelter system as a service user or front-line worker, please consider sharing your experience here: https://form.jotform.com/253026564007047