halfpoint / Depositphotos.com
Homelessness has risen 142% in Lanark County in Smiths Falls in a year.
Director of Social Services Emily Hollington laid the facts bare this week of the astonishing rise from January 2025 to January 2026.
Mississippi Mills Mayor Christa Lowry said this cannot stand.
There were a reported 257 homeless individuals across the county and Smiths Falls last January, and an approximate 622 at the start of this year.
The demographics also reveal differences in gender across the county. Smiths Falls recorded the highest number of men experiencing homelessness, with male cases significantly outnumbering female cases in the community. In contrast, women slightly outnumbered men in municipalities such as Carleton Place and Perth.
Age data shows homelessness is most prevalent among working-age adults. Men between 40 and 49 years old represented the single largest demographic group, while women were most commonly represented in the 30 to 39 age range. Adults between 20 and 69 years old accounted for the vast majority of cases overall.
Hollington’s report shows about 85% of the homeless population resides in Carleton Place, Perth, or Smiths Falls.
She noted the graph showing 49% of the overall homeless population coming from Smiths Falls is not entirely accurate.
The town has transitional housing in the Bridge House property, and those residents are considered homeless.
Hollington said that if you took those individuals out of the data, the percentages would even out across each municipality.
The county’s been active in trying to address the dramatic climb, which to Warden Richard Kidd, is the smallest of lights among grim figures.
Homelessness in rural Ontario increased 30% from 2024 to 2025 and 37% in Lanark County.
Since its inception in 2021, there’s been 800 people registered with the county’s ByName List, which, according to the county’s website, “is a real-time list of people experiencing homelessness in our community. It includes a robust set of data points that support coordinated access and prioritization at a household level, and an understanding of homeless inflow and outflow at a system level. This real-time actionable data supports triage to services, system performance evaluation, and advocacy.”
Story by Grant Deme
