A city measures its anxiety in small percentages.

There is a particular kind of worry that settles into a city when the distance between "us" and "them" begins to shrink. For years, homelessness in Ottawa could be held at arm's length—a crisis visible downtown, perhaps, but not one that reached into the quiet kitchens and family rooms of the suburbs. A new poll suggests that distance is closing, and with it, a quiet shift in how residents see their own futures.

According to a Nanos Research survey conducted for the Ottawa Mission between September 25 and October 6, more than half of Ottawa residents now believe someone they know is at some risk of losing their home . Thirty-eight percent described that risk as small, thirteen percent as medium, and five percent as high. In 2019, a similar poll found that fifty-three percent of respondents believed a loved one faced no such risk at all . The change is not dramatic in any single number, but in the aggregate it tells a story of widening anxiety.

The fear is not only for others. Twenty-four percent of respondents in the 2026 poll believed there was a small risk they themselves could become homeless, up from twenty percent in 2019. Three percent said the risk was high, compared to two percent seven years earlier . These are not large movements, but they are movements in a direction that suggests a fraying sense of security.

What has changed? Respondents were asked what they believed contributed most to homelessness. Addiction and health issues remained the leading factor, named by fifty-four percent. But the share pointing to a lack of affordable housing rose from seventeen percent in 2019 to twenty-three percent in 2026 . The arithmetic of rent and wages, in other words, has become harder to ignore.

Peter Tilley, CEO of the Ottawa Mission, told CTV that the geography of the crisis has changed. "We see homelessness beyond the market now," he said. "The number of people who are homeless have stretched down Bank Street into Somerset Ward, east into Overbrook, everywhere around the city in different places" . The poll's finding that more than half of residents now fear for someone they know, he suggested, is a perception that "wouldn't have been there before."

There is also a shift in how residents understand responsibility. Forty-two percent said addressing homelessness is everyone's job—governments, charities, individuals alike—up from thirty-eight percent in 2019. The share who believed family and friends bore the most responsibility fell from fourteen percent to five percent . The crisis, in other words, is increasingly understood as structural rather than personal, a matter for institutions rather than intimate networks.

And yet, the poll also found that more people are helping directly. Sixty-five percent said they provide some form of support to people who are homeless, up from fifty-seven percent in 2019 . The numbers suggest a city that is both more worried and more engaged—aware that the safety net has holes, and trying, in small ways, to mend them.

The poll carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, nineteen times out of twenty . But the direction of its findings is difficult to dismiss. Ottawa residents are looking at their neighbors, their families, and themselves, and seeing a risk that once seemed remote. Whether that fear translates into policy, or into the quiet accumulation of individual acts of care, remains the open question.

The images in this article were generated by AI.

Sources: CP24, Nanos Research, Ottawa Mission, CTV News