Sure. I was just saying thank you for the opportunity this morning.
In addition to the roles that Mr. Courtice and I play in our organizations, we also co-chair our community's efforts to address our health and homelessness crisis, and that's what we'd like to speak with you about this morning.
London is experiencing a desperate and devastating health and homelessness crisis. You may be somewhat familiar with what's happening in our community, because we've received some recent national media attention, both for our problem but also for our whole-of-community response to address the crisis.
In our community, since 2020 over 200 homeless individuals have died on our streets. As of this morning, that number is 43 for 2023 alone. Since 2020, the number of people living unsheltered has more than doubled, from 900 to over 2,000, and the number of people living with the most complex needs—terrible physical health, mental health and substance use problems—has grown from 100 people to 600 people.
The impacts of this are devastating, not only for the individuals and their families but for our health care system, first responders, businesses and our neighbourhoods.
To put that into perspective, I will share this. Our base system of shelters and homeless-serving organizations is absolutely overwhelmed and beyond capacity. This population results in 10 to 11 EMS calls per day. They have 100% interaction with police, 6,300 emergency room visits a year and businesses are closing in areas that are most impacted. We've had a spread of encampments beyond our downtown core, affecting many more neighbourhoods across our community.
We know that this problem was not created overnight—not even over the last few years. This is decades in the making, and it transcends many governments and political parties. This crisis impacts your communities.
We know that London is not unique in the challenge, but we believe our solution is. Designed by over 200 individuals from 70 local organizations, spanning health and social services, business, land and housing development and levels of government, and supported by a very generous donor family who believe in this plan and have dedicated $25 million to it, we have created what we call a whole-of-community system response. This is government, community and philanthropy working together to address the problem.
The solution is focused on those with the most complex needs who are causing the greatest impacts—the 600 people. It's anchored in two foundational elements: hubs and highly supportive housing.
Hubs exist to help people move safely indoors, access supports and become sustainably housed. Every single interaction in a hub is designed to help the person to their next step to housing through accessing a range of supports, from basic needs to physical health and addiction supports to transitional beds as they prepare for housing.
The second component of the solution is highly supportive housing. We know that by providing these individuals with keys to an apartment, it won't be successful. Time and time again, it has been demonstrated that it's not successful for them or their neighbours. Many will, at least initially, need 24-7, on-site support to be stably housed.
To meet the needs in our community, we believe we need up to 10 hubs and approximately 600 units of highly supportive housing. Now while we only began developing this solution a year ago, we are already implementing. Two hubs will open next month, and last month 70 people moved into new, highly supportive housing units. We have a plan, we are executing the plan and we believe we are making a difference for our community. We also believe that our plan could be a blueprint for other communities across the country.
We need your help. To address this crisis, it will take all of us. We have leveraged all municipal dollars, available provincial and federal allocations and significant donations from Londoners. We are grateful to be the first city in Canada to receive the housing accelerator funding, which will significantly assist with much-needed capital, but it not enough to address this crisis.
What every community needs help with is sustainable and predictable operating funds to support new and creative solutions for this problem. This could be an increase to the annual allocations for Reaching Home or a similar program designed to address this crisis across Canada.
For London, this would mean a commitment of $6 million in Reaching Home funding or a similar program. This would allow us to stabilize our programs and bring on more hubs and highly supportive housing for the most marginalized and chronically homeless people in our community.
With this much-needed assistance, London can continue to implement our whole-of-community system response and meaningfully address the crisis we are experiencing. We can also offer a blueprint for other communities across the country in a time when challenges are dire and there is an urgent need for new and creative solutions.
I'll conclude by thanking you for the opportunity to be here today to share our experiences: both our problems and our solutions. We believe we are on the right path and are making a meaningful difference. With your help, we will address our crisis and help other communities to address theirs.
Thank you.