Brief / The queue
Housing Services Act, 2011
Rent-Geared-to-Income is the other statute
RGI rent is generally 30% of adjusted family net income. On a $1,436 ODSP cheque that is about $431 — inside the shelter cap. The constraint is not the formula. It is that subsidized housing was not built at the scale the lists required, so the wait has ballooned in city after city. Toronto’s 1-bed wait is 15 years. Ottawa’s chronological wait is five to eight. Known homelessness rose double-digits in Peel, York, Durham, Windsor, Simcoe. The queue is the rationing of a right.
Toronto Centralized Waiting List
Active applications, Q1 2026: 104,851 households.
Housed from the list, Q1 2026: 750.
New applications that quarter: 4,361.
| Applicant group | Households |
|---|---|
| No dependents | 40,555 |
| With dependents | 26,431 |
| Seniors | 37,865 |
City of Toronto, Social Housing Waiting List Reports, Q1 2026.
Average wait, Toronto
TCHC briefing to the Tenant Services Committee using 2024 City data on the Centralized Waiting List.
| Unit / category | Average wait |
|---|---|
| Studio — senior | 9 years |
| Studio | 11 years |
| 1-bedroom | 15 years |
| 2-bedroom | 12 years |
| 3+ bedroom | 15 years |
| Special Priority Policy | 27 months |
| Local priority | 44 months |
Special Priority Policy applies chiefly to households fleeing abuse. Everyone else is on the chronological clock.
Ottawa Social Housing Registry
Households waiting at end of 2025: 16,347.
Provincially required RGI service level: 16,502 units under the Housing Services Act.
Average chronological wait: 5 to 8 years, depending on household type.
Homelessness-priority households on the list, 31 Dec 2025: 2,468 (530 with dependents, 1,832 without, 106 seniors).
City of Ottawa, ACS2026-CSS-GEN-007; 2025 Housing and Homelessness Plan progress figures.
What 6.2% looks like
Households housed from Ottawa’s centralized list in 2025: 1,017 — about 6.2% of those waiting.
CityNews / city memo, June 2026: 1,037 households housed from the shelter system the same year; 109 unsheltered individuals housed; 388 through Housing First; 193 through Indigenous Housing First.
Those exits do not empty the RGI list. The list is the long-term instrument. The shelter system is the overflow.
There is not enough subsidized housing. That is the whole mechanism. Until an RGI offer arrives, a recipient whose only income is OW or ODSP must rent in the private market, paying market rent against a shelter line written for a different decade. Toronto housed 750 households from a list of 104,851 in one quarter. Ottawa housed 6.2% of its list in a year. Those are not wait times. They are a decision not to build. That interval — years, not months — is the period in which housing insecurity and homelessness are produced by the interaction of the two statutes.