Thunder Bay’s next mayor will have to grapple with homelessness, housing crisis

Candidates vying to lead one of northern Ontario’s largest municipalities agree that public safety, homelessness and aging infrastructure will have to be among the top priorities for Thunder Bay’s next council.

Nine candidates are competing to replace long-serving mayor and former member of Parliament Ken Boshcoff, who is retiring from municipal politics. He was first elected councillor in 1979 and served two stints as mayor, first from 1997 to 2003 then again in 2022.

Trevor Giertuga, who’s running for mayor after serving as city councillor since 2000, said the rise in crime and homelessness is the main challenge facing the city. If elected, he said he would increase police resources and build more housing.

“I would like to see us return back to neighbourhood policing with more boots on the ground in the areas, so we could target high-risk areas or high-crime areas,” he said, noting that Thunder Bay used to have a crime prevention council whose members included Indigenous leaders, business owners and others in the community.

Statistics Canada’s crime severity index, based on police-reported data, for Thunder Bay increased 18 per cent from 2024 to 2025. The Thunder Bay police website shows the city’s crime severity index has been higher than both provincial and national averages from 2020 to 2024.

The District of Thunder Bay’s Social Services Administration Board estimated in an August report that there were 1,129 homeless people in the city by the end of last year and that at least 58 per cent of them identified as Indigenous.

Earlier this month, the city’s long-awaited temporary shelter village with 80 private cabins and shared washroom and kitchen facilities welcomed its first residents. But Giertuga said the city needs more permanent housing instead of temporary solutions to homelessness.

“The village has opened and although I was opposed to it, we’re in it now, so it’s a matter of making sure it’s run properly,” he said, adding that the $12.5 million spent on the project should have gone toward permanent housing.

Moe Comuzzi, a real estate broker with extensive business experience who is also running for mayor, said the temporary village is a well thought out project and she would be committed to moving it forward if elected.

“It gives people dignity and the opportunity to have a nice, warm, safe place to help them,” she said. “Whether or not they need services for mental health and addictions, the services will be there for them … or whether they’re just waiting for an affordable home that takes a little bit of time to build.”

Comuzzi said building more housing and infrastructure is part of the goal to attract more investment and growth, as the city is an economic hub in northern Ontario.

“Industry, small business, and mining, critical minerals — I mean the opportunities are endless,” she said.

Giertuga said he would also focus on increasing the city’s tax base to avoid steep rate hikes for residents. He said Thunder Bay has a $30-million infrastructure funding gap and city council has been raising the capital budget by five per cent a year to make that gap smaller.

But he said promising to freeze property taxes is not realistic.

“Other candidates have put forward a tax freeze for 2027 and I ask, ‘then how, where, are we going to get the money or what services are we prepared to cut?'”

Comuzzi also said a tax freeze is not feasible.

“Everybody’s feeling the pinch at the grocery store and at the gas station. Businesses are feeling that stress too. So, growing Thunder Bay for all of us is the right step in the right direction,” she said.

Since Thunder Bay is a regional service hub in northern Ontario, Giertuga said he would also advocate for more federal and provincial funding to help the city serve people from nearby communities.

“We have 30,000 people in the city that are not on our census that have come from outlying communities, and not just unhoused people, people coming for cancer treatment, people coming for other medical treatment, people coming for all sorts of different reasons,” he said.

For mayoral candidate Volker Kromm, a project manager and business leader, the rise in poverty is a key issue.

“These last couple of years, we’ve seen a steady decline and such an increase in the effects of poverty on the streets and the drug culture and the cost of living and the whole of the affordability issue,” he said.

“The poverty is growing, there aren’t enough jobs. In some cases, there isn’t the training available, and these people can’t afford to live here because there aren’t enough affordable houses, so they end up on the streets.”

Thunder Bay’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan says getting enough affordable housing will continue to be a problem since the average cost of building a single new unit is $450,000 and “the available funding does not stretch far.”

Kromm said the city needs to better co-ordinate with federal and provincial government agencies and other groups that help homeless people and those struggling with addiction.

“We have a lot of great social service organizations … They’re doing the best that they can, but they work separate,” he said.

Lindsay Martin, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Northwestern Ontario, said her organization supports homeless women and gender-diverse people, including those who struggle with substance use and mental health issues, but has never had much contact with or support from the city.

“A lot of NGOs, or non-for-profits or charitable organizations, they rely on community, they rely on government funding, and the municipality doesn’t necessarily step in to support organizations like Elizabeth Fry Society,” she said.

“It would be good if they started to co-ordinate with work that’s already being done and support it in that way.”

Martin said the next city council should advocate for more support from the province to address issues that lead to homelessness, such as lack of affordable housing and mental health care.

“Without housing, folks are out there struggling … temperatures drop to -35 here at times, and that’s a death sentence for people who are unhoused in our community,” she said.

Peter Diedrich, a mayoral candidate who worked for decades in telecom, technology and venture capital consulting, agreed that more co-ordination with higher levels of government is key to addressing long-standing issues in Thunder Bay.

“The role of a new mayor and a new council is to actually make that co-ordination process work and work flawlessly,” he said.

“It’s not just a municipal problem. Much of the funding and resources need to be coming from provincial and federal sources, and I don’t think that I should go as mayor without a good plan. I don’t want to go and beg for money.”

Diedrich said collaboration with the province is part of his goal to build more housing, have 90 per cent fewer homeless people and zero tent encampments in Thunder Bay in four years. He criticized the previous administration for allowing designated encampment sites in parks, “where children are playing with their families.”

Kromm said a lot of people he met during the election campaign expressed disappointment and frustration about the work of previous city councils.

“I was shocked a little bit at the lack of enthusiasm that people have for the municipal election,” he said.

“When I’m knocking on doors, they say, ‘Oh, I guess we’ll have to sit down and kind of take a look at the issues,'” Kromm said. “If they’re a business or a homeowner that’s been affected by some of the homelessness or the crime issues, then they’re keenly engaged, but still, it’s a fairly small percentage of people that are responding.”

The city said a total of 9.52 per cent of eligible voters, or more than 8,700, cast their ballots in advance as of Thursday morning. The overall turnout in Thunder Bay’s 2022 election was 43 per cent.

Kromm said people need to pay closer attention to what the candidates are saying.

“Take a look at the councillors, take a look at their skill sets, what do they bring to the table?” he said. “If you vote on name recognition, you’re going to get what you’ve always had.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press