The question I hear every day
At every door, in every coffee shop, and in every conversation on this campaign, someone asks me the same thing: "What are YOU going to do about housing and homelessness?"
It is a fair question, and each candidate and the incumbent owes every resident a straight answer. Here it is. The real question is "What are WE going to do?" No mayor can fix this alone. No council can fix it alone. Even the City of Timmins cannot fix it alone. Anyone who tells you their anger and frustration can solve the problem is selling you something. What a mayor can and should do, is lead: bring everyone with a stake to the same table, insist on a real plan, and hold every partner, starting with City Hall, accountable for delivering it.
Our housing challenges are not one-dimensional
Our housing challenges are not one-dimensional, and we will not solve them with one-dimensional answers.
At one end of the continuum are our most vulnerable neighbours. The City's own 2025 Housing Needs Assessment counted roughly 450 people experiencing homelessness. It found more than 40 known encampments in winter, a number that more than doubles in summer, and shelter beds running at capacity. About 2,000 households are on the affordable-housing waitlist. Indigenous residents are badly over-represented in every one of those numbers.
At the other end are working families, young professionals, nurses, doctors, tradespeople and miners who want to live here and cannot find a home. Timmins averages only about two dozen new housing starts a year. Meanwhile the mining sector alone is projecting 3500 new jobs over the next five years.
In between are seniors who cannot downsize, young people who cannot move out, and employers who cannot recruit. These are not separate problems. They are one housing system, and it is blocked at every level. When the top of the ladder is jammed, nobody moves up from the bottom.
This is a big problem. It needs a big plan.
For too long, Timmins has treated housing and homelessness as a series of separate files: an encampment here, a shelter debate there, a subdivision somewhere else. Each has its own meeting, its own report and its own frustration. The result is that residents see a lot of talk and very little change.
That ends with a formal, council-adopted plan. In the first 100 days of the new term, I will ask council to adopt a Timmins Housing and Homelessness Action Plan with:
Clear targets: housing units built, people housed, encampments resolved, shelter capacity matched to need.
Real timelines, and a named lead responsible for each action.
A funded budget, built on an honest review of our development charges and capital reserves, so we know what we have before we ask taxpayers for more.
A public scorecard, reported to council and to residents every quarter. If we are falling behind, you will know it, and so will we.
The mayor and council must own this plan together. I have said from the first day of this campaign that there is no single thing a mayor can solve alone. Housing is the clearest proof of that. My job is to put the right information in front of council, build agreement, and make sure that once a decision is made, we move forward as one.
From committee meetings to meaningful action
Timmins has no shortage of good people working on this file. We have the Cochrane District Services Board, the Community Leadership Table convened with Mushkegowuk Council, the Canadian Mental Health Association, our health partners, and many dedicated front-line agencies. They know what they are doing, and they are doing it under enormous strain.
What we have not had is a way to turn their meetings into commitments. City-wide collaboration has to move beyond committee meetings and into big, meaningful action. Under the Action Plan, every partner at the table, including the City, will be asked to put something concrete on it: land, dollars, housing units, services or staff. They will be measured against what they committed. Collaboration that ends in a set of minutes is not collaboration. Collaboration that ends in a building, a bed or a set of keys is.
We WILL NOT build a perfect system. There’s an old saying that says perfect is the enemy of the good. We have to STOP knee-jerk reactions to small obstacles. What if this happens? What if that happens? When this or that happens, we will deal with it. Doing NOTHING because this or that might happen, is paralyzing.
Every level of government has to show up
The City cannot solve this alone, and it should stop pretending it can. Real progress needs:
The Province of Ontario: for supportive housing, mental-health and addictions treatment, and the treatment capacity our region still needs after the loss of the HART hub. We cannot keep saying "no" to the funding and services our community needs.
Our regional partners, First Nation and non-First Nation communities alike: Timmins is the service hub for the whole region. People come here for health care, for services and for opportunity. Solutions have to be built with Mushkegowuk Council and First Nation leadership, and with our neighbouring municipalities across the district, not handed down to them.
The Government of Canada, where necessary: through the National Housing Strategy and federal housing-infrastructure programs that Timmins should be competing for aggressively.
My role as mayor will be to make sure Timmins speaks to Queen's Park and Ottawa with one voice, with a plan already in hand, so that when funding opens, Timmins is at the front of the line rather than organizing another meeting.
Industry is at the table, and labour needs are escalating
Our largest employers are not bystanders to this crisis. They are all active stakeholders in this discussion. Mining has been the foundation of the Porcupine for more than a century, and I intend to make sure it remains so for the next century.
But the labour needs of our mining sector are escalating day by day. Every one of those companies needs workers, and every worker needs a home. I do not want Timmins to become a de facto mining camp, with workers flying in and out and paying their taxes, raising their families and spending their paycheques somewhere else. While existing council members spend inordinate amount of time arguing about traffic patterns on Pine Street, I will focus council’s attention on those families living here, coaching our teams, filling our schools and building our tax base.
That means industry belongs at the housing table as a full partner, through workforce housing, co-investment and long-term planning that matches housing supply to hiring plans. When our employers grow, Timmins should grow with them.
Living Space must be moved, and moved the right way
Let me be direct: Living Space must be moved. Its current location is not working for the people who rely on it, for the businesses and residents around it, or for our downtown.
But how we move it matters as much as whether we move it. I will not support "out of sight, out of mind." Pushing vulnerable people to the edge of town, away from the help they need, does not solve homelessness. It only hides it, and it always comes back.
The right location is one adjacent to services: health care, mental-health and addictions treatment, housing workers and Indigenous-led supports, all within reach. And it should be paired with large-scale social enterprise: real work, training and pathways back into the workforce, so that a shelter becomes a starting point rather than an end point.
The shelter is governed by the Cochrane District Services Board and its partners, not by City Hall alone. So, the decision has to be made with them, with Mushkegowuk Council, and with the Community Leadership Table. As mayor, I will push that decision forward, hold everyone to a timeline, and make sure the community is told plainly where things stand.
What we will do, together
Adopt a formal Timmins Housing and Homelessness Action Plan within the first 100 days, with targets, timelines, a budget and a quarterly public scorecard.
Turn the stakeholder table into a compact, with written commitments of land, dollars, units and services from every partner, including the City.
Relocate Living Space to a site adjacent to services and paired with large-scale social enterprise, decided with our district and First Nation partners on a firm timeline.
Unlock housing supply by having the City take on early infrastructure risk, as it has at Melrose Heights; returning tax-arrears lands to productive use; and reviewing our development charges against peer northern cities.
Bring industry in as a full partner on workforce housing that matches our employers' hiring plans.
Speak with one voice to Queen's Park and Ottawa, with a plan in hand and projects ready to fund.
The answer
So, when you ask me, "What are YOU going to do?", my answer is that I am going to lead. That means bringing council, our district and First Nation partners, our employers, and our provincial and federal governments to one table, with one plan, and holding all of us, me first, to delivering it.
Because the real question has always been "What are WE going to do?" And for the first time in a long time, Timmins will have an answer.
Rob Knox, candidate for Mayor of Timmins
