Grey County has approved its latest ten-year housing action plan, and councillors say it builds on significant progress that’s already been made.
The County is the level of government that handles public housing locally, and it’s the level of government that receives provincial and federal funding to support housing and related initiatives.
Over the past handful of years, Grey County has purchased a motel to use as an emergency shelter with some staff supports. It has purchased and renovated a 14th Street West building into transitional housing, and it has created and tracked a by-name list of people experiencing homelessness. It’s added 127 affordable units since 2019.
It plans to open a 19 unit supportive housing program called “Rockview” in Owen Sound in 2026-2027.
“Grey County is leading,” said County Councillor and Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy, after hearing a staff report on the ten-year plan. He added, “I’ve just been in Toronto, I’ve been in Ottawa, I’ve been several places. I’m going to be in Edmonton in a week and you’re going to be amazed at how bad it is. Owen Sound looks pretty damn good on the street compared to all those other places— contrary to what uninformed people think.”
Boddy added, “I hope everyone that has sent me an email call me lazy and useless and saying “do something,” is paying attention today. Grey County has been doing it for ten years. Look at this plan. It’s a really good plan. ”
A staff report from County Director of Community Services Anne Marie Shaw Thursday outlined phased actions from 2026 to 2035 to expand affordable, supportive, and transitional housing, strengthen coordinated service delivery, and improve outcomes for residents experiencing housing instability or homelessness.
Over the next ten years, the goal is to reduce chronic homelessness and strive for functional zero. It aims to add over 300 deeply affordable homes. Deeply affordable is described as housing options that are significantly below market rates and meant for low income people.
The County also wants to add 50 supportive or transitional homes, and reduce the number of people returning to homelessness by 50 per cent.
Its ten-year plan says it aims to, “Achieve quality, culturally safe services across the continuum, including Indigenous‑led pathways and mental health & addictions supports in all community housing buildings within five years.”
Key actions in the ten-year plan include developing a pipeline of County and non-profit builds. The County lists them as 36 units in Owen Sound to be shovel ready in 2026, 34 units in Dundalk to be shovel ready in 2027, 30 units in Owen Sound in the pre development stage in 2027, four units in the Town of the Blue Mountains with the land acquired in 2028, 40 units in Durham in 2029 and 90 units in Owen Sound in 2029 or beyond that.
The plan is to co-design 50 supportive housing units with Ontario Health Teams and health and social service partners; embed 24/7 or visiting supports aligned to resident acuity; integrate with 14th Street and Short Term Shelter.
They plan to launch a portable benefit to quickly house households, indexed to local market rents, and have a financial assistance program for secondary suite development in Grey County.
There is also a land strategy to identify surplus or vacant lands and make them development ready with regard to zoning, servicing, site planning.
County Councillor Barbara Dobreen added during the discussion, “I have to echo what has already been said at the table.” She said when she participates in Association of Municipalities of Ontario discussions, she feels Grey County is regarded as a leader. “When we are having our updates, there are people across Ontario at those tables, the Eastern Warden’s Caucus, the Western Warden’s Caucus, various other counties, and to councillor Boddy’s point, they’re looking to Grey County. What’s Grey County doing? And they’re really, truly interested in mirroring some of those initiatives. So kudos to staff, and we are leading the way.”
Shaw’s report says the need for housing continues to grow, explaining, the active community housing wait list grew from 913 in 2020 to 2,545 in 2025 with the average wait pushed from 2.9 years in 2020 to 4.9 years in 2025.
Councillor Scott Greig asked Shaw if there are any initiatives she sees elsewhere that she’d like Grey County to build upon, or if they’re already doing them.
She noted Owen Sound is doing its part, saying, “We’re partnering with land that’s available,” noting it means land will be there when the time comes to build on it.
She says the City supported the Neighbourhood Response Team pilot that was downtown, explaining, “It was only on for 150 days but it was very successful. With lots of people and businesses reaching out and I think that’s what people need.”
Shaw added, “People see someone in their community that’ struggling with addictions or struggling with mental health and they’re out in the open, and they’re public, and I think that people have a number of reactions to that. Sometimes it’s fear, sometimes it’s guilt. I think that there’s a lot to be said that housing and homelessness is not going to cure that.”
Shaw added, “We have a drug crisis and we have systems that need to be improved across the province, at the provincial level and the federal level that need to be funded in order for us to truly be able to reach out and help some of the people that we’re seeing downtown.’
“That is right across the province, that’s not just here. I think that by partnering and being supportive of each other then we can certainly work together with Owen Sound, as we do. We work with your bylaw to reach out to encampments. I think supporting Safe N Sound, supporting ourselves with some of the initiatives,” said Shaw.
Shaw told councillors, “One of the things that I do really like is supportive housing. I think it works. 14th street, our new Rockview program that’s coming up, the ability for us to put supportive units in any affordable build that we’re going to do in the next little while I think is very important, but the tough part is finding those funding dollars because as a community, as County Housing we don’t have access to the funds required to do supportive housing so we have to work very closely with our OHT (Ontario Health Team) and with our community partners that do have those funds and say ‘Hey, this is what we’d like to do and can we partner?’
She said the transitional housing program at 14th Street in Owen Sound is a great example, “We didn’t even have funds for supports but council was good and said ‘lets do it,’ so we built it and yes, we got the supports after.”
She added, “It’s hard to get everything to all line up at the same time so you do have to take some of those risks.”
“For me, my wish list would be more supportive housing and more health supports available in the community,” said Shaw.
In 2024, Brightshores Health Services opened a mental health and addictions centre in the former Bayview School in Owen Sound. It has 45 inpatient beds as well as outpatient services.
Shaw told councillors, “Today we’re laying out a plan in which we want and hope to be able to better system and I think if we have all of your support then I know that we’re going to be able to do that, and to make that work.”
A page from Grey County’s new plan