Carney launches Budget 2026 plan to end homelessness within 10 years, beginning with Manitoba partnership

Prime Minister Mark Carney launched a Budget 2026 plan to put Canada on a path to end homelessness within 10 years, backed by nearly $30 billion. Manitoba is the first partner, with more than $1 billion in new federal funding. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham joined the announcement. The partnership is intended to support more than 2,000 new supportive and transitional homes and a new Winnipeg Centre for Mental Health and Addictions.

The national plan brings help, housing and health care together. It allocates $6.5 billion to renew and strengthen the Reaching Home Initiative, supporting community-led prevention, connections to shelter and essential services, employment support and help finding a permanent home. Communities will be expected to provide more consistent and timely data to measure homelessness and track progress. Another $5.5 billion will renew the Canada Housing Benefit, providing direct monthly rental assistance to low-income Canadians, including survivors of gender-based violence, to help them pay rent, keep their homes and avoid homelessness.

For housing, the federal government will invest $10 billion through Build Canada Homes to support about 25,000 supportive and transitional homes across Canada. Ottawa will fund construction; provinces and territories will pay operating costs and provide the services residents need to remain housed. The investment could grow as more partners join.

For health care, $5 billion through Build Canada Homes will establish an Integrated Supports Fund for facilities combining housing, health care, mental health and addictions treatment, and other social services. The work will involve public, private and philanthropic partners. The model draws on Toronto’s Dunn House. Project figures report a 52 per cent reduction in residents’ emergency department visits, a 79 per cent reduction in hospital stay length and $2.1 million in hospital savings during its first two years. A further $2 billion through the Build Communities Strong Fund’s Health Infrastructure Fund will build community mental health and addictions treatment facilities and refurbish existing ones.

Kinew and community and philanthropic partners brought forward the Winnipeg plan, and the federal government responded. Up to $800 million in federal funding will support more than 2,000 supportive and transitional homes for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. The City of Winnipeg and Manitoba will identify and provide public land. The province will operate the homes and provide accompanying supports.

More than $200 million in federal funding, the first investment from the new Integrated Supports Fund, will support construction of the Winnipeg Centre for Mental Health and Addictions. The centre will combine acute and outpatient mental health and addictions care with permanent housing and co-ordinated support services, offering one front door to help, housing and health. Manitoba will cover half the construction cost, operate the centre and provide job training and income supports. Philanthropic partners will contribute from construction through operations. The centre is expected to be fully operational in as soon as three years.

Together with supportive and transitional housing already committed by Build Canada Homes in partnership with Manitoba, the projects mean up to 2,500 new homes in Winnipeg, with critical supports for people who need them most.

The federal government described the Winnipeg partnership as a model for what governments, communities and partners can accomplish together, and invited every willing partner across the country to join. Carney said no government can solve homelessness alone and that Budget 2026 brings help, housing and health care together, with Winnipeg as the first step in putting the plan into action. Kinew said Manitoba was no longer willing to see community members living in tents. He described the province’s Your Way Home strategy as going tent to tent to offer housing and the wraparound supports people need to stay housed. He said the new investment would expand capacity to give everyone a home and the mental health and addictions supports they need. Gillingham called it a once-in-a-generation investment that could change lives, saying federal, provincial, municipal and Indigenous governments were working with community and private-sector partners. He said Winnipeg was ready to deliver the projects as quickly as possible.

Finance and National Revenue Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled Budget 2026 in the House of Commons on Nov. 5, 2026. Its housing strategy has three pillars. The first is nearly $30 billion to build supportive and transitional housing, bring housing and health care together, expand mental health and addictions treatment, and strengthen homelessness prevention and rental assistance, with the goal of ending homelessness within 10 years. The second is nearly $15 billion to triple annual non-market housing starts to 24,000, including by mobilizing investment, making better use of public land and expanding affordable housing through non-profit organizations, housing co-operatives and public agencies. The third is more than $750 million to make homes faster and cheaper to build by streamlining approvals and standardizing modern building methods. The measures build on more than $100 billion the federal government is already estimated to spend on housing across Canada.

Homelessness has nearly doubled across Canada since 2018, with about 65,000 people experiencing it in 2025. In Winnipeg the previous year, 2,469 people were identified as experiencing homelessness on a given night. Among those surveyed, nearly 68 per cent were experiencing chronic homelessness, about 80 per cent identified as Indigenous, and nine in 10 reported at least one health condition or related challenge, including substance use and mental health issues.

Reaching Home supports community-led efforts to prevent and reduce homelessness, including chronic homelessness. It gives communities flexibility to address local priorities and supports distinctions-based approaches. The program works with communities across Canada to collect and analyse homelessness data. This includes free Homeless Individuals and Families Information System software used to create real-time data, co-ordination of annual counts in more than 100 cities, and longitudinal studies on shelter use.

Toronto’s Dunn House, Canada’s first social medicine housing project, combines permanent supportive housing with on-site health and social supports. In its first two years, emergency department visits among residents fell by 52 per cent, hospital stay length fell by 79 per cent and hospital savings totalled $2.1 million. Launched in September 2025, Build Canada Homes is the federal housing agency dedicated to accelerating affordable housing construction at scale. It brings together federal land, financing, investment and development expertise, working with non-profit, Indigenous, public and private partners to build and enable affordable, supportive and transitional housing.