Mayor responds after Stevenson questions if $11,000/month bed in homeless hub best value for taxpayers

Coun. Stevenson is questioning if $11,000/month bed for London's homeless hubs is the best value for taxpayers following a recent audit. Daryl Newcome reports.

An auditor’s report determined the cost of operating beds inside London’s two homeless hubs is significantly higher than the daily cost for an individual to stay at an emergency shelter.

However, upcoming funding decisions will consider which beds provide greater overall value to the community.

On Wednesday, Coun. Susan Stevenson pressed for more information about a value-for-money audit of London’s response to homelessness including the Atlohsa Family Healing Service’s Indigenous-led hub and Youth Opportunities Unlimited hub for homeless youth.

“I don’t know why we’re not getting comparatives,” Stevenson said to colleagues on the Audit Committee. “How do you know you got value for money unless you compare it to something?”

Stevenson emphasized her point by referring to the cost of operating beds.

According to the audit’s supplemental report:

• Short-term emergency shelters - $120.93 per bed per day
• Indigenous-led hub - $207.25 per bed per day’
• Youth Hub - $362.34 per bed, per day

“I want to be able to tell taxpayers that it’s good to continue doing this, to renew contracts at $11,000 a month per bed, instead of $2,000 to $4,000 a month for a shelter bed. I still didn’t get that out of this report,” Stevenson said.

On Thursday, Mayor Josh Morgan responded, “I think that represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the types of people we’re serving, [because] in traditional shelters there are no supports.”

During the interview with CTV News, Morgan carried a copy of the same supplemental audit report in his hand.

It explains the higher cost to operate beds in hubs is “…due to the hubs having a higher relative staffing intensity, clinical and cultural programming, security, and on-site case management focused on stabilizing people and actively progressing them into housing.”

“They take people who have the highest impacts on the streets downtown, in Old East Village, and midtown,” the mayor said. “They take them, they put them into a place with wrap-around supports. Yes, it is more costly than existing shelters, but these individuals are not successful in existing shelters.”

He emphasized that the purpose of hubs is to prepare individuals to move into supportive housing, whereas emergency shelters can be a revolving door back onto the streets each day.

“You’re going to have them on the streets and consuming massive amounts of services[(including] police contacts, emergency room visits, land ambulance transfers, hospital inpatient stays,” Morgan said. “Are you going to have them someplace less costly? Or with proper supports and a pathway to move on to housing?”

The future of London’s two municipal hubs remains uncertain, because council only approved two years of operating funds.

Morgan said future funding options could include provincial support (aligning with Ontario’s HART Hub system), private donations, and/or municipal funding.

“Within the next year or so, we’re going to have to decide how to fund the operations of the two existing hubs, which have been quite successful, based on not only the review last fall, but the value-for-money audit as well,” he explained.

Stevenson said her decision-making about future funding for the two hubs would have benefited from more comparative analysis in the supplemental audit report.

“I was hoping there was some comparative work done to be able to tell Londoners that there was value-for-money in the additional costs, because the costs are significant,” she tells CTV News.

The supplemental audit report will be considered by council on March 3, 2026.