A Toronto housing project run with a major hospital network cut emergency room visits by 52 per cent among 48 formerly homeless residents, and its backers now plan to expand the model to 300 people, according to reports published Oct. 1, 2026.
The project, called Dunn House, is a four-storey building in the city’s Parkdale neighbourhood with 51 units, according to CBC News. Residents hold long-term leases, and doctors, nurses and social workers work on site. CBC describes it as Canada’s first “social medicine” housing project, meaning health care and housing are delivered together rather than in separate systems.
It was built through a partnership of the University Health Network (UHN), the non-profit Fred Victor, the City of Toronto, the province, the federal rapid housing initiative and United Way, according to CBC.
Preliminary data covered 48 residents. According to the CP24 report, their emergency visits fell by 52 per cent in the year after they moved in, and the length of their hospital stays when admitted fell by 79 per cent. Before moving in, those 48 people generated $2.1 million in hospital costs over 12 months, and the year after housing saw $1.66 million saved, CP24 reported. CBC reported that the same group had 1,837 emergency visits in the year before housing, and that the drop in ER visit costs alone came to $413,000 a year.
The two outlets describe the savings slightly differently, so readers should treat the dollar figures as early, preliminary estimates rather than audited results. Neither report we reviewed lists the full cost of building and running the project, so the savings cannot be read as a simple net figure.
Dr. Andrew Boozary, a physician linked to the program, called the results “staggering” and “incredibly encouraging for how we need to rethink homelessness,” according to CBC. CP24 reports he described the approach as more humane and cost effective for vulnerable people.
Why this matters beyond Toronto
Homelessness and health care are often discussed as separate problems. For people without stable housing, they are tightly linked. Without a safe place to sleep, store medication or recover from illness, many end up returning to emergency departments for problems that a stable home and regular care could have prevented. Dunn House is an early test of whether fixing the housing problem first can ease pressure on hospitals.
That pressure is real for young Canadians too. Emergency room crowding affects anyone who needs urgent care, and rising rents have pushed more people toward the edge of losing housing. A model that moves long-term tenants out of the ER cycle could free up beds, though one building is a small base to judge from.
There are limits to what the numbers show. The results cover 48 people over a short period and come from the program’s own preliminary tracking. They do not yet show whether the gains last over several years, or whether results would be the same in a different city, with different tenants or at a larger scale. Expanding from 51 residents to 300 would also depend on funding and partners that the reports reviewed do not detail, and neither gave a construction timeline.
What to watch: whether governments commit capital and operating money for the expansion, whether UHN publishes a full evaluation with costs included, and whether other Canadian hospitals try similar partnerships. If the early results hold up, the model offers a concrete answer to a question many cities are asking, which is how to cut homelessness and hospital strain at the same time.
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Via CP24, with figures also from CBC News. Sourcing note: dollar figures differ between the two reports and are preliminary. Photo is a file photo and does not show Dunn House.
