Toronto to double hospital housing program to reduce ER visits
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The Toronto hospital network will double down on its unique permanent housing program for homeless people who frequently end up in emergency departments, a model that has seen great success for both residents and the hospital.
University Health Network will build a near replica of the Dunn House, which was built next to a hospital-owned parking lot in Toronto’s west end.
Preliminary data shared with The Canadian Press shows the 48 residents living at Dunn House had made nearly 2,000 visits to the ER in the year before arriving. A year later, those same residents visited emergency rooms 52 percent less often, and when they were admitted they saw a 79 percent drop in their length of stay.
“These are patients with advanced chronic disease, mental illness and substance use disorders,” said Dr. Andrew Buzzari, director of UHN’s Gattuso Center for Social Medicine.
“They cycle through emergency departments because our care has failed and because we’ve sent 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 brainchild of Boozari, who first thought of the idea more than seven years ago. “Housing is health,” he said.
Residents say their new homes have changed their lives and given them hope again.
The hospital will build 54 new apartments as part of the expansion, which will involve participation 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 many other health professionals. The City of Toronto will invest $10 million and lead the delivery of the new homes.
Federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson said the Dunn House model needed to be scaled up across the country.
“We need to make it simpler and faster to get these projects off the ground,” he said. “We need to help thousands of people across Canada find safe, affordable homes.”
This scale is challenging in Ontario alone. Last week, the province’s 444 municipalities released updated data on the number of homeless individuals in Ontario. It found that approximately 85,000 Ontarians were homeless in 2025, with the majority of them living in emergency shelters.
Two months after making it a priority to remove encroachments near children’s spaces, the city says it has made significant progress. But as CBC’s Len Harrison reports, critics argue it doesn’t address the root causes of the problem.
The problem is becoming acute. There were about 6,000 fewer homeless people in 2024. And nearly 50 per cent more people are without homes in 2025 than in 2019, before the COVID 19 pandemic hit Canada in 2020.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is excited about Dunn House’s highly supportive housing model.
“This is the model that breaks the cycle of homelessness, disease and despair,” he said. “This is where hope lies.”
