I think it's simple just to say that this is a core part of the social welfare state that is supposed to catch people but hasn't for some time. There's not a way to provide people who are in dire need of assistance with housing that can be built by the private market. What's important about funding for this directly is not just the units—which you need. As Russil suggested, you run into a whole host of similar barriers as you do with market housing.
Here in Toronto, at 75 Cummer Avenue, our provincial government waited two years on an approval for 56 supportive housing units that ended up costing the city over a million dollars just in rent on the unassembled, prefabricated building it had.
We need to directly fund that housing, and then we also need to directly fund the wraparound services that enable people to get better and be able to get their lives back on track. There are both the capital investments and the operational investments that are necessary in order to sustainably reduce the level of homelessness in our cities.