Understanding Peel's housing need and service levels

How Peel's housing needs are assessed and the service level we need to fully help our residents.

Peel Region oversees the affordable housing system in Peel. We work with partners to implement our 10-year Housing and Homelessness Plan. The Plan was developed with the community, and its main goals are to help clients get and keep housing they can afford.

Peel is facing an affordable housing crisis that is deep, enduring, and inequitable.

The affordable housing system has insufficient resources to maintain assets, increase supply, and support clients at the level that fully addresses the need of our community.

Challenges Peel is facing

There is a lack of deeply affordable and supportive housing for people with low incomes, or who are experiencing family, physical, mental health, and addiction struggles.

Rising housing prices and rent have made it increasingly unaffordable for middle-income earners to live in Peel and now many need our help to remain in their homes or find more affordable housing.

Our role

As Service Manager of the affordable housing system, we focus on the lack of affordable, community, and supportive housing. The Ontario government and Canadian government are more focused on policy and increasing market housing.

We provide households with financial and non-financial support to help them get and keep housing they can afford. This includes ongoing subsidies and one-time funding for first and last month’s rent, or overdue rent. Non-financial support includes referrals to community agency partners that provide life skills, counselling, budgeting education and other support that helps clients get and keep their housing.

Even though we have seen a huge increase in demand, we've worked hard to improve our services and to increase community and supportive housing supply. Since 2018, with Peel Region Council's leadership and significant investments, we have been implementing our 10-year Peel Housing and Homelessness Plan which has helped thousands of Peel residents get and keep housing they can afford.

Housing services dashboard

Learn about the 2025 system capacity and operational performance.

Access the dashboard

Key insights

In 2025, Housing Services’ gross year-end operating budget was $368.9 million. Peel’s funded portion increased to 70%, a year-over-year increase of 8%, totaling $258.7 million in funding.
At the same time, federal funding decreased by $36 million, funding 17% of Peel’s total expenditures, down from 26% in 2024. The provincially funded portion remained stagnant at 13%, representing only $46.7 million of the Housing Support gross budget.
There are over 16,000 units in Peel’s affordable housing system. Over 10,300 of these units are subsidized, or have rents geared to income, which benefits households by providing them with an affordable place to call home.
In addition to the units in Peel’s affordable housing system, more than 4,100 households are benefitting from a regional or provincially funded portable subsidy which allows residents to pay an affordable rent in a private market unit.
As Service Manager of the affordable housing system, Peel is responsible to ensure community housing assets remain in a good state of repair. In 2025, 69% of the community housing system was in a good state, down 3% from 2024.
Consequently, 31% of the community housing system is now in a less than good or poor state of repair. Many community housing providers are small scale non-profit operators who require continued investment from Peel Region to enable and support their financial viability. Despite our increased investment, need continues to grow and challenges remain. As with all large urban centres across Canada, Peel’s affordable housing crisis is deep, enduring and inequitable.

Defining core housing need

A household is in core housing need if:

Its housing is unacceptable and does not meet one or more of the adequacy, suitability, or affordability standards.
Acceptable alternative housing in the community would cost 30% or more of its net income.

Peel’s core housing need estimate is based on adjusting our internal estimate for the proportion of households in core housing need for the census year 2021 to account for the latest intercensal population estimates for Peel region provided by Statistics Canada.

Our internal methodology for calculating core housing need was developed out of concern that the official 2021 census estimate of core housing need was influenced by the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Our methodology for estimating need in Peel region for the various programs and service types drew on a variety of data sources.

For further details about our methods contact us.

We can't solve the affordable housing crisis alone

Chronic underfunding from the Canadian and Ontario governments for both community and supportive housing continues to prevent Peel Region from operating at a scale that meets our community’s needs.

We must continue to advocate to Canadian and Ontario governments for the policy and funding changes needed to effectively address the affordable housing crisis. These policy and funding changes are summarized in our HOME advocacy framework, approved by Peel Region Council.

Peel Region Council report: Overview of the Provincial and Federal housing announcements: implications for Peel Region

These positions include:

Ensuring the use of existing housing for homes.
Funding housing services and supports that are delivered by service managers.
District Social Services Administration Boards and sector partner agencies appropriately.
Prioritizing the construction of new non-profit and affordable homes and the maintenance of existing non-profit and affordable homes.
Enhancing social and income support to close the gap between earned income and affordability.

As Peel’s population continues to grow, core housing need is increasing across Peel region.

The higher percentage of core housing need in Mississauga is likely reflective of:

The larger share of smaller sized households (i.e. one person) resulting from a higher proportion of smaller sized units available - single person households much likelier to be in core housing need.

More information about Peel Region's Housing Services 2025 annual outcomes can be found in the 2025 Housing Services Annual Report.