Homelessness in Barrie

The frame around everything below: on September 9, 2025, Mayor Alex Nuttall declared a State of Emergency to address encampments. It remained in effect as of this page's last check of the City's site on October 7, 2026; the City's alert banner showed it last updated September 21, 2026. Ontario court decisions referenced on the City's own page emphasize that municipalities must ensure adequate and accessible shelter exists before encampments are cleared.

Each series below is a run of dated readings, drawn first as a chart and then given in full in the table, with the change from one reading to the next. The City publishes its people count every two weeks as a table on its page, and this site takes the whole series from that table as it stood on October 7, 2026, because the City revises earlier readings as records are verified. The two encampment counts come from the page's own figures at each date it gave, read from archived copies between October 2025 and August 2026 and from this site's own retrievals.

How many people are homeless in Barrie?

Source: Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments (October 7, 2026), City of Barrie. Original document. The City's page as of October 7, 2026: 726 people identifying as homeless (HIFIS, September 28); zero known encampments on municipally-owned land (October 6); 235 encampments addressed since September 9, 2025 (to October 6), and 221 in the emergency's first year. Its table of two-weekly HIFIS counts from September 1, 2025 is the source of the whole people series here. Retrieved October 7, 2026.

How many encampments are there in Barrie, and how many have been addressed?

• ¹ From this reading the page counts known encampments on municipally-owned land only; its September 1, 2025 figure counted active encampments throughout the city. Figures on either side of this point are not directly comparable.

Sources: Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments (archived captures, October 2025 to August 2026), City of Barrie, via the Internet Archive. Original document. Archived copy. Ten archived copies of the City's page, captured between October 9, 2025 and August 2, 2026. Each reading here carries the date the page itself gave for it; the extract quotes every capture's figures with its archive link. Retrieved October 8, 2026. Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments, City of Barrie. Original document. The City's own operational page, and the primary source for: the State of Emergency declared September 9, 2025 (still in effect); 705 individuals identifying as homeless per HIFIS data (the shared City and County of Simcoe homelessness database) as of August 4, 2026; two known encampments on municipally-owned land as of August 14, 2026; 209 encampments "addressed" between the declaration and August 14, 2026; and both encampment definitions, quoted. The City updates the page on a rolling basis, and partway through 2026 its cumulative "addressed" count widened from City-owned property to City-owned and private property, so each figure is given with its date. Retrieved August 18, 2026. Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments (October 7, 2026), City of Barrie. Original document. The City's page as of October 7, 2026: 726 people identifying as homeless (HIFIS, September 28); zero known encampments on municipally-owned land (October 6); 235 encampments addressed since September 9, 2025 (to October 6), and 221 in the emergency's first year. Its table of two-weekly HIFIS counts from September 1, 2025 is the source of the whole people series here. Retrieved October 7, 2026.

• ¹ Staff reports to Executive Committee described the count as sites on City-owned property through April 1, 2026, and as sites on City-owned and private property from May 13, 2026. This reading and those after it are on the broader basis. Figures on either side of this point are not directly comparable.

Sources: Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments (archived captures, October 2025 to August 2026), City of Barrie, via the Internet Archive. Original document. Archived copy. Ten archived copies of the City's page, captured between October 9, 2025 and August 2, 2026. Each reading here carries the date the page itself gave for it; the extract quotes every capture's figures with its archive link. Retrieved October 8, 2026. Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments, City of Barrie. Original document. The City's own operational page, and the primary source for: the State of Emergency declared September 9, 2025 (still in effect); 705 individuals identifying as homeless per HIFIS data (the shared City and County of Simcoe homelessness database) as of August 4, 2026; two known encampments on municipally-owned land as of August 14, 2026; 209 encampments "addressed" between the declaration and August 14, 2026; and both encampment definitions, quoted. The City updates the page on a rolling basis, and partway through 2026 its cumulative "addressed" count widened from City-owned property to City-owned and private property, so each figure is given with its date. Retrieved August 18, 2026. Creating Safer Spaces: Barrie's Coordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness & Encampments (October 7, 2026), City of Barrie. Original document. The City's page as of October 7, 2026: 726 people identifying as homeless (HIFIS, September 28); zero known encampments on municipally-owned land (October 6); 235 encampments addressed since September 9, 2025 (to October 6), and 221 in the emergency's first year. Its table of two-weekly HIFIS counts from September 1, 2025 is the source of the whole people series here. Retrieved October 7, 2026.

Where the City's count of encampments addressed changed what it covers: the Clerk's updates to Executive Committee describe 111 sites "on City-owned property" on April 1, 2026, and 149 sites "on both City-owned and private property" on May 13, 2026. The City's page itself says only "across the city". In the table, a change from one reading to the next is the number of sites addressed in between.

Sources: Executive Committee Report, April 1, 2026, City of Barrie — Executive Committee, dated April 1, 2026. Original document. The Clerk's update: the Encampment Response Team had addressed 111 sites "on City-owned property" since the emergency was declared. Executive Committee Report, May 13, 2026, City of Barrie — Executive Committee, dated May 13, 2026. Original document. The Clerk's update: 149 sites addressed "on both City-owned and private property" since the emergency was declared, the first time the count is described as including private property. All retrieved August 9, 2026.

The City's page changes as the response continues. The County of Simcoe publishes its own dashboards ("Homeless Individuals in Simcoe County" and "Shelter System Flow"), embedded as Power BI reports on its data portal; their figures use the County's definitions and a County-wide geography, and are not comparable row-for-row with the City numbers above.

What does the County's Point-in-Time count show?

The one genuine multi-year series available is the County of Simcoe's Point-in-Time count, held every two years across the whole County service area — Barrie, Orillia and the towns — not the City alone. It is the only way to see a trend rather than a snapshot, and the County's own report warns against reading too much into it: a change in canvassing effort or in what data sources feed the count can look exactly like a change in how many people are unhoused.

• ¹ Registry Week survey responses, not an in-person count — the least comparable point in this series. Figures on either side of this point are not directly comparable.
• ² First combined Point-in-Time count and Registry Week. Figures on either side of this point are not directly comparable.
• ³ The County attributes part of this rise to improved canvassing and newly-added healthcare administrative data, not only to more people being unhoused. Figures on either side of this point are not directly comparable.

Source: Everyone Counts 2024: Insights from Simcoe County's Homelessness Enumeration, County of Simcoe, dated April 1, 2025. Original document. The County's own five-point Point-in-Time series (2016, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024), County-wide including Barrie and Orillia — not the City of Barrie alone, and not on the same basis as the City's live HIFIS figure elsewhere on this site. The report itself warns that "changes in methodology, data collection processes, and definitions of homelessness over time can influence the results, making direct comparisons potentially misleading." The 2016 figure is Registry Week survey responses, a different method than the in-person counts from 2018 on. Retrieved August 18, 2026.