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.

The numbers

In 2024, a new dashboard of performance metrics has been developed. This dashboard presents 2024 system capacity and our 2024 operational performance.

Key insights

We are investing more and reaching more people.

In 2024, housing and supports were provided to a total of 46,970 households of which, 27,665 were new households that were supported.
Of the 27,665 new households who were supported in 2024; 10,762 households achieved a better housing outcome by either keeping their housing or receiving new affordable housing.
There are over 16,000 units in Peel’s affordable housing system. Of this total, over 10,300 are subsidized, or have rents geared to income, which benefits households by providing them with an affordable place to call home.
In 2024, a total of 381 new transitional, supportive, community housing units and emergency shelter spaces were added to Peel’s affordable housing system.
In addition to the units in Peel’s affordable housing system, more than 4,000 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 2024, 72% of community housing provider stock was in a good state of repair compared to 57% of total stock in 2023. This improvement in rating helps to ensure these assets remain safe and healthy homes for residents to live.
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.
Over the last 2 years, demand for our services has increased by almost 69% as evidenced by the nearly 20,000 service requests received in 2024 verses the less than 12,000 received in 2022.
Council’s strategic investments over this term of council reflect Peel’s long-term commitment to expanding safe, affordable, and inclusive housing across Peel region and the provision of supports and services to meet a larger proportion of unmet need in our community.

All levels of government must continue to work together to solve the affordable housing crisis.

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’s Housing Services 2024 annual outcomes can be found in the November 13, 2025, report to Peel Region Council titled 2024 Housing Services Annual Report.

Access the 2024 Housing System Capacity and Operational Performance Report.

Additional information

The percentage of core housing need met does not include all interventions that are provided by Peel Region, as not all help to remove a household from core housing need.

Peel Region received an increase of funding from the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in 2023 and 2024 due to the asylum claimant crisis. This funding was targeted and does not reflect an increase in funding from the Canadian government for our mandated services.

The decrease in total existing supply (units) in 2024 is due to a lower demand from private rental landlords to work with Peel Region to provide affordable housing in their units. The low vacancy rate and ability to charge higher rents on the open market in 2024 drove landlords to decline agreements with Peel Region.