Platform

Vision and Three Pillars

Transparency

Transparency is more than publishing documents. Residents should be able to see what decisions are being made, what services cost, how city spending connects to outcomes, which Councillor has primary responsibility for their geographic Ward, what meetings are happening, and what the results were.

Financial transparency is also a tool for reducing costs. When residents can see detailed spending, staffing, contracts, debt, service costs, and results, many more people can help identify duplication, unnecessary expenditures, better purchasing options, and more efficient ways to deliver services. Those efficiencies can help reduce the amount that has to be raised through property taxes.

Zero-Based Budgeting and Finding Efficiencies

Zero-based budgeting begins each periodic review with the service outcomes residents and Council expect, then asks departments to justify expenditures from the ground up. What are we trying to accomplish? What does it cost? Is the programme or expense still needed? Is there a simpler or less expensive way to achieve the same or a better result?

The review protects spending that produces real public value and identifies spending that can be eliminated, simplified, consolidated, redesigned, or delivered more efficiently.

Local budget researcher Jim Hutton estimates that a properly reconciled comparison with 2011 City spending could reveal savings equal to roughly 5–10% of the municipal tax levy. Because Ontario's strong-mayor framework makes the Mayor responsible for proposing the City's budget, Andrii would use that responsibility to test the estimate through a detailed, software-assisted review and publish the resulting service-level financial information wherever legally permitted. This is a testable estimate, not a guaranteed tax cut. Read the evidence, scope, and comparison.

Savings identified through transparent zero-based review can reduce the tax levy, reduce pressure for future tax increases, pay down expensive debt, and create room to protect higher-priority services at a lower overall cost.

See the spending → understand the spending → question assumptions → find efficiencies → lower the cost of government → reduce pressure on property taxes.

Andrii has already worked toward this through helpos.ca, which makes Owen Sound agendas, transcripts, meeting results, and local articles easier to access.

• complete financial disclosure for all municipal and rate-supported services, including water, wastewater, and policing;
• staffing and compensation reporting;
• review of management structure and staffing;
• annual manager goals and results;
• Council-directed administration;
• public tracking of Council decisions from approval through implementation;
• searchable, accessible public records linking decisions, costs, and results.

The Participation Plan explains how residents can use this public knowledge to discuss issues, contribute expertise, and develop solutions together.

Learn more about the Transparency Plan

Want City finances to be easier to see? Sign the Financial Transparency petition.

Wastewater Infrastructure and Ratepayer Protection

Owen Sound's wastewater system carries substantial debt and expensive repair obligations. The most immediate system-wide capacity pressure comes from wet-weather inflow and infiltration, which can push peak flows far above ordinary daily use. Andrii would prioritize sewer separation, targeted infiltration-and-inflow investigations, contamination detection, automatic sampling, and upstream source tracing.

Identified polluters should face enforcement and recovery of investigation, cleanup, and infrastructure-repair costs. Serious contamination incidents, bypasses, evidence, repair costs, and outcomes should be disclosed promptly. The City should also audit odour sources and existing digester-biogas use, prioritizing practical on-site energy recovery before considering vehicle-fuel options. It should investigate safe, provincially compliant independent wastewater options for suitable properties, while preserving the principle that lawful system users pay for the services they use. Read the detailed Wastewater Infrastructure and Ratepayer Protection plan.

Participation

Participation means giving residents practical ways to help govern, maintain, and strengthen Owen Sound.

Transparency produces usable public knowledge. Participation turns that knowledge into civic action by giving residents ways to contribute expertise, organize locally, propose solutions, and build capacity together.

Participation can also reduce pressure on property taxes. Residents can help with safe, voluntary neighbourhood stewardship where appropriate, while local hiring, import replacement, repair capacity, co-operative enterprise, and locally controlled technology can reduce dependence on expensive outside suppliers.

Every dollar the City spends creates demand. Where practical, competitive, and legally permitted, Owen Sound should publish recurring purchasing and repair needs so local businesses, tradespeople, makers, schools, farms, and co-operatives can develop competitive local alternatives. The goal is to keep more of the money Owen Sound already spends circulating locally while building the skills, businesses, tools, and civic institutions needed to provide better services at lower long-term cost.

Public Document Forum

Using information published through the Transparency Plan, the Public Document Forum would give residents ways to discuss reports and proposals, contribute expertise, compare alternatives, and follow decisions through implementation.

Open-Source Civic Problem-Solving

Like contributors to open-source software, residents, workers, tradespeople, businesses, financial professionals, makers, and technical residents can identify problems, contribute expertise, and improve solutions. The full Participation Plan connects this process with Wards and Local Areas, shared stewardship, Grey Bruce Makers, Affordable Rural Communities, local businesses, farms, schools, co-operatives, and community organizations.

Research behind the plan

Read more about shared stewardship and civic participation.

Compassion

Compassion means responding to difficult problems with love, kindness, and clear thinking. Public decisions should leave fear, anger, stigma, and blame behind while considering everyone affected: a person experiencing homelessness and the resident whose neighbourhood is affected; a person caught in addiction and their family; a person accused of an offence and the victim; downtown businesses, taxpayers, service workers, police, tenants, landlords, and future generations.

Good policy should seek the long-term wellbeing of the whole community by recognizing each group’s needs and choosing responses that improve safety, dignity, affordability, and opportunity for everyone over time.

A large part of compassion is prevention. Severe material insecurity and social isolation can contribute to cycles involving homelessness, petty offending, emergency services, policing, hospitals, and the justice system. Stable access to housing, food, support, recovery, and community can reduce the pressures that contribute to desperation, petty offending, homelessness, and repeated crises.

Compassion in practice follows a clear progression:

1. Meet immediate needs. Work with OSHaRE and other willing providers on a mobile meal pilot bringing prepared meals and essential support to scheduled locations closer to where people stay. This would make food easier to access while reducing repeated trips into the downtown core.
2. Keep people housed. Better use of existing homes, the proposed vacant-home tax, and tenant-rights information can help residents maintain stable lives before rising costs lead to homelessness, hunger, desperation, or repeated reliance on emergency services.
3. Make stable life genuinely affordable. Affordable Rural Communities could give workers, families, seniors, young adults, growers, renters, and other residents access to modest homes, productive land, shared infrastructure, community economies of scale, and lower recurring housing and food costs.
4. Pilot a voluntary rural rehabilitation option. Council should direct staff to develop one voluntary rural rehabilitation pilot offering people seeking help with addiction a stable environment with professional and peer support, meaningful routines, practical work, community, and a credible path toward independent life.

HELP NOW → PREVENT NEW HOMELESSNESS → MAKE HOUSING AFFORDABLE
+ PILOT A VOLUNTARY RURAL REHAB OPTION

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Ward and Local Representation

Ward and Local Representation

Ward and local representation applies all three pillars.

Owen Sound currently elects its Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and seven Councillors at large. The immediate plan keeps that electoral system. After the 2026 election, Council would organize the seven Councillors around seven geographic Wards, assigning each Councillor primary responsibility for learning about one ward, communicating with its residents, and bringing its concerns to City Hall.

In this plan, a ward initially means a geographic area of responsibility within Owen Sound’s existing at-large electoral system.

Every Councillor would continue to be elected by voters across Owen Sound, represent the whole city, vote on every citywide matter, remain available to residents from every area, and exercise independent judgement. A Councillor could take responsibility for a ward regardless of where they live.

Each ward would contain about 10 Local Areas, with roughly 150 households in each. Each Local Area would hold an annual voluntary neighbourhood gathering where residents can meet neighbours, discuss local concerns and projects, identify local helpers, and choose their Local Representative for the coming year. The Local Representative would meet with the relevant Ward Councillor, carry neighbourhood concerns and priorities forward, share City information locally, and help follow issues through City Hall.

At-large election → seven Councillors → one geographic ward assigned to each Councillor → about 10 Local Areas per ward → Local Representatives connected with residents

It supports transparency because residents can see who represents their Ward, where to bring concerns, and how local priorities are being handled at Council.

It supports participation because each Ward and Local Area has a clearer place for residents to organize ideas, identify needs, support improvements, and grow future civic leadership.

It supports compassion because Ward Councillors and Local Representatives would be expected to take a compassionate approach when dealing with residents, staff, local concerns, and difficult situations. That means slowing down, looking beneath surface reactions, seeking the love and human need behind conflict, and working toward decisions that build cohesion over time.

Local Representatives would create no additional level of government. The Mayor and Deputy Mayor would retain their citywide roles and Grey County responsibilities.

During the 2026–2030 term, residents and Council could evaluate the geographic ward system. Closer to 2030, that experience could inform a public consultation and statutory process on whether to adopt electoral wards, under which residents in each ward would elect their own Ward Councillor.

Shared Stewardship

Shared stewardship would give residents voluntary, City-approved ways to prevent problems, care for public spaces, and support neighbours. It would be designed to supplement paid municipal work and would operate within safety, liability, collective-agreement, and professional-responsibility requirements.

Open suitable City maintenance to resident stewardship. As maintenance and service contracts come up for renewal or review, Council should examine and where appropriate renegotiate contract terms so safe, suitable tasks can include City-approved resident participation. Neighbourhood cleanups, gardening and planting, minor public-space care, reporting and inspection support, repair or maintenance events, trail stewardship, park stewardship, and other low-risk work could be approved where appropriate. This would remove unnecessary contractual barriers while preserving work that requires trained City staff or contractors, union labour, professional or trade qualifications, specialized equipment, accessibility standards, or specific safety and liability controls.

Approved activities could include:

• prevention, issue reporting, safety walks, and emergency preparedness;
• minor maintenance, cleanups, tree watering, gardens, and other public-space care;
• tool libraries, repair events, skill-sharing, and practical workshops;
• community gardens, edible landscapes, and local food projects;
• neighbour support, including voluntary help for seniors and residents with mobility challenges.

Ward Councillors, Local Representatives, public meetings, City staff, labour representatives, and trained responders would help define safe roles and coordinate approved projects. Community organizations and businesses could contribute where their capacity is useful.

Ward Stewardship Credit

After legal review and a limited pilot, Owen Sound could consider a Ward Stewardship Credit for verified contributions to City-approved projects. Early uses might include recreation or municipal-program credits.

Following a useful pilot and legal review, credits might circulate through participating locally owned stores and possibly be accepted for selected municipal fees or capped property-tax-related credits where legally permitted. This remains a longer-term possibility pending pilot results and approved design.

Program safeguards should include:

• inclusion of renters as well as property owners;
• transferability under clear rules, so renters could use credits directly or exchange them with landlords, local businesses, or other participants;
• city-approved projects and verified contributions;
• design with staff, labour representatives, residents, seniors, people with disabilities, renters, landlords, and local businesses;
• protection for paid municipal work while adding supplemental civic capacity.

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Affordable Homes, Land Access, Food, and Local Resilience

Food security, housing affordability, tenant rights, protection from illegal rent increases, firewood, local business, and local resilience are connected. As land, energy, fertilizer, machinery, transportation, and housing costs rise, younger generations need a credible path toward affordable homes, practical skills, family life, land-based businesses, and low-input food and firewood production.

The construction cost of a conventional house alone can exceed what a person or household earning $30,000, $50,000, or even $70,000 annually can responsibly finance. Land, wells, septic systems, roads, permits, development charges, and financing add further costs. Approving more conventional detached houses may increase supply at the expensive end while placing the building beyond the financing reach of many residents.

Housing costs can perpetuate poverty when most household income goes to rent or a mortgage and the household remains fully dependent on cash for food and heat. Affordable housing should include credible paths toward gardens, greenhouses, orchards, perennial crops, firewood, practical skills, rural enterprise, and shared productive infrastructure.

Housing Costs and Food Insecurity

OSHaRE reports that most families using its Family Assistance Meal Program are working families. After paying accommodation, transportation, and other essential costs, many have little money left for food.

The demand has risen rapidly. OSHaRE reported serving approximately 146,000 meals in 2023, more than 212,000 in 2024, and 327,905 in 2025. Its Family Assistance Meal Program grew from 12 families to more than 340 families.

Housing security requires more than four walls. More than 340 families now use OSHaRE’s Family Assistance Meal Program, and most are working families. A secure household also needs the ability to produce food, raise a family, develop skills, and build useful work or a small business close to home.

That is why Affordable Rural Communities (ARC) pair a home with productive land. A household could grow annual food, establish fruit and nut trees, develop practical skills, use workshops or shared equipment, build household businesses and productive assets, and contribute to local production and industry. At community scale, this can support food security, rural enterprise, import replacement, and a stronger Grey-Bruce economy from the household level upward.

Making Existing Homes Available

Owen Sound should make full use of the homes it already has.

When homes sit empty while residents are looking for places to live, the city loses twice: families struggle to find housing, and neighbourhoods lose the life, care, and stability that occupied homes bring.

We can introduce a vacant home tax to bring empty homes back into active use as rentals, owner-occupied homes, or homes for sale. The goal is simple: more homes lived in, more stable neighbourhoods, and more people able to build their lives in Owen Sound.

The vacant home tax would help return existing urban homes to use, while Affordable Rural Communities would create a new low-cost pathway combining housing, land access, food security, and rural livelihoods.

A city should reward homes being used for people, families, and community. Homes are for people.

Protecting Tenants from Illegal Rent Increases

Ontario’s ordinary rent rules continue to apply when a landlord paints a unit, replaces flooring or appliances, or completes other routine or cosmetic improvements.

Ontario Regulation 516/06, section 18 defines a capital expenditure as an extraordinary or significant renovation, repair, replacement, or addition whose expected benefit lasts at least five years. It specifically excludes:

“routine or ordinary work” and work that is “substantially cosmetic in nature.”

Appliance repairs, general maintenance, cleaning, painting, and cosmetic modernization therefore remain within the ordinary rent-increase framework.

Major and lasting building work may support an above-guideline application in some circumstances. Examples include replacing a failing roof or a worn-out central heating system where the work preserves the building, maintains an essential system, or meets health and safety standards.

An additional increase for qualifying work proceeds through an above-guideline application to the Landlord and Tenant Board. The landlord discloses the work and its cost, affected tenants may respond, and the Board determines the lawful increase.

The Landlord and Tenant Board provides an official guide explaining how above-guideline rent-increase applications work.

A tenant who has paid an unlawful increase may be able to file a T1 Tenant Application for a Rebate, asking the Board to determine the lawful rent and order repayment. Useful evidence includes the lease, rent-increase notices, payment records, photographs, and messages describing the work or the reason given for the increase. Filing deadlines apply.

Some rental units first occupied for residential purposes after November 15, 2018 fall outside the annual rent-increase guideline. Notice and timing requirements continue to apply, and the Grey Bruce Community Legal Clinic can help residents understand the rules for their particular unit.

We can turn this preliminary information into a clear City tenant-rights resource available online and in print. It would help residents understand lawful increases, follow Landlord and Tenant Board proceedings, preserve useful evidence, and find qualified assistance.

Tenant assistance in Grey and Bruce

Residents who need advice about their particular circumstances can contact the Grey Bruce Community Legal Clinic’s housing-law service. The clinic provides free legal services to eligible low-income residents of Grey and Bruce Counties.

Building a Resilient Local Food System

High-input farming can save labour, but it depends on fuel, fertilizer, machinery, chemicals, debt, and long-distance transport. When those inputs rise, food costs rise with them.

Low-input farming, edible landscapes, gardens, orchards, greenhouses, woodlots, and small farms can reduce dependence on expensive outside inputs while creating more meaningful local livelihoods. Grey County will need thousands more low-input farmers, growers, tree stewards, firewood producers, food processors, preservers, and local distributors.

Making Affordable Rural Communities Legal

Affordable Rural Communities would provide a County planning pathway for intact, productive properties where modest dwellings, food production, shared facilities, and secure long-term tenure can work together. They would serve workers, families, seniors, young adults, growers, and residents seeking access to land.

Conventional construction remains useful, but a modest 150 m² conventional house can cost about $383,000 to construct before land and site costs. At 5.5% over 25 years, the building alone costs about $2,352 per month and requires income above $72,000 before property taxes and heating. Owen Sound’s median household income was $63,200, while the median one-person household had $34,000.

Campaign working estimates place the resident-owned completed dwelling at $51,000–$74,000, with a $61,000 central case and $353.72/month in illustrative dwelling financing. Under the current Living Region legal-minimum ordinary-site model, one adult has a $268.22/month secure productive-site lease plus genuinely shared infrastructure, for a combined illustrative housing cost of $621.94/month; two adults plus two children have $392.47/month for the site layer, for $746.19/month combined. These are planning baselines, not quotations or guaranteed rents.

The model would keep each property intact and avoid severances. Its primary tenure model would keep the parent property as one parcel under one title: residents could own compliant permanent homes and lease defined residential and productive sites, while roads and genuinely shared infrastructure remained with the overall property. Productive hectares are leased allocations, not separately titled household lots. Homes would generally remain within the existing one-to-two-hectare farmstead envelope, with approximately 250 m² per household for the dwelling and immediate private outdoor space. Early planning would reserve about one hectare of productive land per adult. Once a property, residential plan, and occupants are known, the Living Region carrying-capacity refinement would test soil, food production, household composition, building heat, woody energy, and resilience needs. One hectare for one adult and two hectares for two adults remain planning benchmarks; shallow, rocky, or otherwise constrained sites can require more. Household land allocations could cover gardens, greenhouses, perennial crops, orchards, and coppice woodlots, while an existing farmhouse could provide shared kitchen, laundry, storage, workshop, or gathering space.

Explore the ARC affordability calculator

That common policy groundwork was followed by Grey County’s approval of a project-specific County Official Plan amendment for the proposed Thornbury Acres residential farm co-operative. The next County Council could pursue a low-red-tape framework for modest dwellings, permanent affordability, productive land, and multigenerational families while participating municipalities retain local approval authority.

This is also an import-replacement opportunity: local demand could support manufacturing and repair of yurt components, platforms, windows, doors, heaters, greenhouses, water systems, furniture, and food-processing equipment, alongside more local food, wood, and fibre production.

Read the full Affordable Rural Communities proposal, cost model, and implementation plan

Join the Affordable Rural Communities Interest List

Read the detailed background article on affordable rural communities.

Transportation That Works With Owen Sound’s Geography

Owen Sound’s hills are one of the greatest barriers to car-free travel across the city. We can develop transit options that use buses for the steepest parts of a journey while walking, cycling, mobility devices, and local routes complete the first and final portions.

Evening Service Until 10 p.m.

Evening service was the most requested improvement in the City’s transit survey, selected by 71% of respondents when asked which features would encourage them to use transit more. Extending useful service until 10 p.m. would help hospital, retail, restaurant, college, and other shift workers.

One option is to extend all four daytime routes until 10 p.m. Preliminary campaign modelling places the additional annual operating cost at approximately $200,000 to $250,000, equivalent to roughly $20 per Owen Sound household at the lower end and somewhat more at the upper end.

A smaller first step could extend one core hill route until 10 p.m. as a pilot. The current marginal planning estimate is approximately $48,600 per year, or roughly $5 per household. Ridership, reliability, shift-worker access, operating experience, and public feedback could then guide whether evening service should expand to all four routes.

These are preliminary campaign planning estimates. Operating, staffing, fuel, maintenance, and insurance quotations would establish approved costs before Council makes a budget decision.

More Frequent Service and a Possible Hill Loop

Higher service frequency was the second most requested improvement addressed by this plan, selected by 47% of survey respondents. One option for improving frequency is a Hill Loop connecting Owen Sound District Secondary School → downtown transit terminal → Georgian College → Brightshores Hospital → 16th Street East shopping area → Heritage Place Mall → downtown → OSDSS.

• Two buses could travel in opposite directions, with terminal departures alternating at approximately :00, :15, :30, and :45. Each direction would return about every 30 minutes while riders at the terminal would see a bus about every 15 minutes.
• Alternatively, both buses could travel in the same direction approximately 15 minutes apart, providing more consistent frequency along the full loop. Public input and operational testing would help determine which pattern is more useful.
• Approximately 12 scheduled stops would keep the route direct while maintaining useful walking access. Current GIS modelling estimates ordinary directional cycles of approximately 25 to 28 minutes, leaving recovery time within a 30-minute schedule.

The conventional transit fleet includes an additional bus that could help test higher-frequency service, subject to confirming vehicle availability and maintaining adequate spare coverage. A four-route concept could combine the Hill Loop with direct Brooke and West Side service and a southern coverage route. The map and route pattern remain proposals pending public input, operational testing, and Council approval.

Local Representatives could gather feedback within Local Areas, Councillors could compare needs across the city, and transit riders could test proposed routes and schedules. Current ridership and GPS data, public input, operating experience, and cost quotations would inform the options presented to Council. Council would ultimately decide the routes, direction pattern, service hours, pilot scope, and approved budget.

Bus, Bicycle, and Walking Integration

The bus would provide the difficult hill crossing while riders complete a flatter first or final portion by bicycle, walking, or mobility device.

• Continue bicycle racks on conventional buses and investigate three-bicycle racks on future compatible vehicles.
• Publish a practical Owen Sound transportation map showing comfortable bicycle and walking connections, highway crossings, steep sections, secure parking, and winter-maintained links.
• Add secure bicycle parking and basic repair facilities at the Downtown Transit Terminal, OSDSS, Georgian College/Brightshores Hospital, and Heritage Place Mall.

Owen Sound’s quiet local streets can form much of the recommended bicycle network. Signed parallel routes and improved crossings can provide comfortable alternatives to higher-traffic provincial highway corridors.

Bringing More Transit Capacity Home

We can examine a hybrid public and co-operative operating model. The City would retain public control of routes, fares, vehicles, accessibility standards, and service data. A local nonprofit or worker co-operative could operate selected services or eventually compete for a broader operating contract. Verified savings would remain in Owen Sound and be reinvested into evening hours, frequency, neighbourhood coverage, and fair transit-worker compensation.

1. Publish transparent operating, ridership, reliability, and cost data.
2. Consider piloting a locally operated evening core route before deciding whether to extend all four routes.
3. Evaluate a broader co-operative bid when the existing contract and procurement schedule permit.

Savings could come from local administration, shared facilities, right-sized vehicles, and reduced external contractor overhead, subject to an open-book feasibility study and competitive quotations.

The goal is one connected mobility network shaped with residents: useful evening service for shift workers, more frequent buses across the hills, direct local routes, and mapped bicycle and walking connections for the first and final portions of each journey.

Sources and Supporting Analysis

• City of Owen Sound adopted 2026 Mayor’s Budget, Public Transit division.
• Owen Sound Transit Optimization Study, including route analysis and rider engagement.
• Campaign GIS route modelling, integrated mobility findings, bicycle analysis, and cost scenarios are preliminary planning work and require operational testing and quotations.

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Downtown Services, Homelessness, and Voluntary Recovery

This plan connects four practical responses: bringing food closer to people who need it now, preventing new homelessness, making housing genuinely affordable, and developing one voluntary rural rehabilitation pilot for people seeking freedom from addiction.

Why prevention matters

Toronto Public Health reported that from January through June 2024, the median age at death among people experiencing homelessness was 50 for men and 36 for women, compared with 78 and 85 in Toronto’s general population. Drug toxicity contributed to 54% of reported deaths.

These are median ages at death rather than life-expectancy estimates. They nevertheless show why the plan emphasizes keeping people housed before they reach prolonged homelessness and helping people already outside regain stability.

Preventing homelessness also reduces the number of people who are homeless. The people visible on the street today are not necessarily the same population year after year. People die, find housing, enter recovery, leave the area, or otherwise exit homelessness while new people continue to lose their homes and take their place.

Reducing homelessness therefore requires reducing the flow of new people into homelessness while helping people who are already homeless find housing and recovery. Keeping someone housed today prevents another person from joining the homeless population tomorrow. The unusually young ages at death also mean that a continuing visible population can partly reflect new people entering homelessness as others leave it. Prevention is one of the most important ways to make the total population decline over time, while recovery support remains essential for people already facing homelessness and addiction.

Current local scale

Grey County’s Safe N’ Sound Emergency Shelter Needs Assessment (June 18, 2024, pp. 3–4) reports that the County’s October 18, 2021 one-day enumeration identified 142 people experiencing homelessness, including 27 who were unsheltered. The assessment covers Grey County’s homelessness system-planning service area and combines enumeration, By-Name List, shelter-use, and community-engagement evidence. It describes the enumeration as a minimum point-in-time count because some people and families can be missed.

Grey County’s spring 2026 By-Name List snapshot recorded approximately 140 people experiencing homelessness across the County, including 39 living unsheltered. This countywide snapshot provides an approximate scale rather than a permanent headcount. A By-Name List is a consent-based, real-time service list, so its figures are methodologically different from the 2021 enumeration.

Many current meal, shelter, outreach, and support services are based in Owen Sound. Grey County’s Short-Term Shelter Program lists intake at the County Administration Building in Owen Sound and a satellite office in Hanover, while Safe ’N Sound’s Owen Sound programme provides food, showers, laundry, crisis support, and transitional housing. The County needs assessment found that 110 of 213 people using Safe ’N Sound’s overnight service were from the local area, mainly Owen Sound. People living elsewhere in the County or near the city’s edges can therefore face repeated travel into Owen Sound to reach support.

Housing, recovery support, food production, and community participation under this plan would be voluntary. Residents would choose whether to enter the rural rehabilitation pilot, join an affordable rural community, grow food, or take part in shared projects.

Owen Sound and Grey County must act within Canadian Charter protections, Ontario’s Health Care Consent Act, and existing provincial authority. A general municipal or county system of mandatory detoxification, addiction treatment, forced relocation, or compulsory participation falls outside current municipal and county authority and would require major provincial legislative changes.

Immediate Food Access: A Mobile Meal Pilot

Many people experiencing homelessness already stay near the edge of Owen Sound and travel downtown to access food. Work with OSHaRE and other willing providers on a mobile meal pilot bringing prepared meals and essential support to scheduled locations closer to where people stay.

OSHaRE has indicated openness to the idea, with a suitable van and operating resources being the main practical needs. It could continue preparing food at its existing kitchen while a mobile meal van or food truck handles distribution. This would preserve OSHaRE’s kitchen, storage, volunteer, administrative, family, and indoor-programme capacity, allowing the organization to keep using its existing facility while testing mobile service.

Because meals would already be prepared and packaged, a pilot vehicle could focus on safe hot and cold storage, transport capacity, serving space, and weather protection. The City could help secure a suitable vehicle, stopping locations, permissions, coordination, grants, and service-agreement funding.

OSHaRE is independent. Participation by OSHaRE would require its agreement. Food and outreach providers, public health, people using the service, and residents near proposed stops would also help shape the pilot. The pilot would preserve dependable food access, serve more than one location where useful, and reduce concentrated daily activity in the downtown commercial core.

Preventing Homelessness Through Affordable Homes and Food Security

Food insecurity reaches far beyond visible homelessness. OSHaRE reported providing 327,905 meals through its programmes in 2025. Across its six weekly service days, that is roughly 1,050 meal portions per service day.

The County’s Housing and Homelessness Plan page identifies the current Colour It Home ten-year strategy. The scale of meal assistance shows that most food support serves housed residents who are struggling to afford rent, utilities, and food at the same time.

Affordable Rural Communities address that underlying pressure. They would offer genuinely affordable homes, access to land, and opportunities to grow food for workers, families, seniors, young adults, growers, and others at risk of losing stable housing. Lower housing costs and food-growing capacity can help people afford both a secure home and nutritious food before financial pressure becomes homelessness.

Voluntary Rural Rehabilitation Pilot

Council should direct staff to develop one voluntary rural rehabilitation pilot for people seeking recovery from addiction. Stable housing, trained support, community, meaningful routines, practical skills, responsibility, and opportunities to grow food would reinforce one another.

The Rat Park study demonstrated the importance of environment in recovery. Earlier experiments placed a rat alone in a small cage with little more than water or drugged water to choose from, where drug use became compulsive and deadly. Rat Park gave mammals space, social connection, stimulation, and a liveable environment. Even after forced opiate exposure, the reported result was dramatic: the rats returned to ordinary water. Humans are mammals too, and recovery grows stronger through support, community, and meaningful purpose.

There are successful precedents for long-term therapeutic communities. San Patrignano in Italy combines long-term residence with farming, food production, trades, shared meals, education, peer support, and gradually increasing responsibility. Its strength is that people are given enough time to rebuild healthy habits, practical competence, relationships, dignity, and a meaningful role in a functioning community.

Long-term community-based recovery gives people time to carry initial stabilization into secure housing, healthy relationships, practical competence, and sustained purpose. The US National Institute on Drug Abuse often cites relapse rates around 40-60% over shorter observation periods. In one five-year follow-up of conventional inpatient treatment, 29.8% of participants remained continuously abstinent, while 70.2% relapsed at least once.

Long-term therapeutic communities have reported stronger sustained outcomes. San Patrignano reports about 72% recovery among residents who complete its full program, with related follow-up research reporting roughly 70% of completers drug-free four years later. These completer outcomes support the central lesson: recovery grows through years of community, responsibility, meaningful work, and a believable future.

People completing the pilot could choose to continue into permanent, independently governed, mixed-resident Affordable Rural Communities while carrying forward their relationships, skills, and productive routines. Affordable Rural Communities remain general affordable housing for workers, families, seniors, young adults, growers, and others seeking secure housing and access to land; people arriving through the pilot would form only a small part of that broader population.

Grey County cooperation is required to establish the rural planning framework for Affordable Rural Communities and the rehabilitation pilot. Pilot participation, later movement into an Affordable Rural Community, food growing, and community activities would remain voluntary.

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County-Level Leadership and Resident Outcomes

County-Level Leadership

The mayor represents Owen Sound at Grey County. County-level decisions affect housing, roads, social services, land use, public health, paramedics, policing pressures, and infrastructure.

Owen Sound needs a mayor who can advocate clearly for local needs while working cooperatively with neighbouring municipalities. County-level leadership should follow the same three pillars: transparent advocacy, participatory regional problem-solving, and compassionate long-term decision-making.

What This Means for Residents

• easier access to meeting information and results;
• clearer local accountability;
• a named Local Representative;
• more visible public civic discussion;
• more ways to participate safely;
• stronger neighbourhood cohesion;
• more practical food and resilience planning;
• better prevention before problems become expensive emergencies;
• compassionate decision-making that considers everyone involved.

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