I will begin with absolute, raw honesty: after three hours suffering in person and a further five watching online, after following an entire news cycle and reading all the reporting, and after discussing it with a number of folks in the know, I’m still not entirely sure what happened at Full Council this week. So come with me, as we push past a wardrobe full of old coats and emerge into a snowy world of magic, municipal politics, and dreadful, dreadful confusion about what is going on. Here’s what we know - so grab your Turkish delight1 and let’s go!
First, the basics
Here’s the agenda. That’s useful if you want to dig deeper into any of these topics, and maybe you should this time. The staff reports have good summaries. (When there’s an option, choose the HTML agenda with reports attached.)
That link also includes the recording of the meeting, which ran from 1 p.m. until 9:03 p.m., so I wouldn’t advise it. It’s like popping an Ambien and watching an experimental movie where everyone’s improvising the dialogue and the cameras are operated by a ferret covered in butter. It’s useful to check stuff, and fun to chuckle at people joining online without awareness of the ‘mute” button, but otherwise I’d advise you take a nap instead.
All of council seemed to be there at one point or another, based on the voting record. It’s important to remember that councillors can join online without it being apparent to the public. The whole process is a bit challenging to follow, actually. Hence, well, this.
And the gallery was lively again. The numbers watching peaked at about 75, based on my count, and there were a variety of signs supporting various things (see above, below, and all over the reporting).
This was an important meeting for a number of different reasons, mainly related to incumbent council candidates setting out their stalls for the muni election this October. I plan to examine this more closely, but we seem to have at least 11 of the 15 keen to come back, per this Fanshawe student reporting.
We’ll take this issue-by-issue; note links repeat because everybody’s unpicking this tangle in their own way.
Homelessness and warming spaces
The reporting on this comes from:
CBC London. This explains it carefully, and well:
Council agreed the spaces at Boyle Community Centre, the overnight winter warming centre, could open when the following conditions are met:
When the temperature reaches –15 C.
Or when the wind chill reaches –20 C.
Previously, both conditions had to occur simultaneously.
Click through for their full reporting.
The London Free Press. Jack-of-the-Freeps focuses on ice storms, which are now not covered by warming centre provision. This reflects the Wiarton Willie approach taken by the in-house council weather forecasters, who would have voted differently a few weeks ago, I suspect. Let’s hope Old Man Winter is reading this, and complies by not killing anybody. Hell of a situation with an election coming - this is risky.
CTV London. I’m less keen on this report, which prominently features Councillor Susan Stevenson’s comments about challenges in the neighbourhood, and seeks to generate engagement by taking a unique and short moment from an eight-hour meeting - that’s not my style. Stevenson’s right, of course, and I would prefer a better balance than that in the report, which I’m sharing alongside the others for context.
Good Neighbour Agreements
This was an attempt by several council members to impose new legal responsibilities on agencies helping people on the street. I covered this here and note that agenda includes an amazing 52 submissions from the public on the issue (plus 36 about warming centres). Opinion Alert: I’m very pleased to see this idea go away, at least for a while.
Separately but related, the Full Council meeting included an attempt to limit City contracts for homeless agencies’ services to one year only. Scroll down the CBC reporting for more on this, which also failed. Speakers, notably councillors David Ferreira and Sam Trosow, felt strongly about the effect on workers who themselves are struggling to make ends meet. It was an interesting topic that I’ll probably come back to, not least because Stevenson made some comments about not tying the City into longer-term commitments in an election year. She should take care with that one.
Funding for 519 Pursuit
I haven’t seen this in any of the reporting, but it amounts to: 519 Pursuit (Go ahead and click on that and make a donation. Go ahead. We’ll wait.) telling council that federal funding is about to end and they need it to support unsheltered people. It’s item 6.2 on the agenda.
Here’s who they’re helping:
The data for January 2026 month’s end on the City of London’s website states that there were 2263 unique clients, 1003 being chronically homeless and a report of 32 active encampments in London. This data alone creates a strong statement for the need of outreach teams in the community.
That’s from Executive Director Allison DeBlaire’s letter to council, which is there to read.
So Councillor Sam Trosow stepped up to suggest this:
Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to negotiate a contract extension with 519Pursuit Umbrella Relief Programs Inc. for the provision of outreach supports for outdoor basic needs for the period of April 1, 2026, to March 31, 2027 at an upset amount of $341,049 (excluding HST), to be funded from the Social Services Reserve Fund;
The item was referred to staff for discussion and a report, and will come back through the usual committees process, but not before a long discussion about how the feds download costs to munis and this should be resisted - that’s was Councillor Shawn Lewis’s view. I was in the gallery, where nobody cared where the money was coming from. And, it’s worth noting these are outreach services, and some councillors (notably Stevenson and Lewis) recently tried to switch other funding away from outreach to indoor services, to much dismay from agencies.
The mayor’s housing incentive
And this one’s a bit ouchie. If I was writing for eyeballs & clicks, I’d probably use some intemperate language here, but the goal is not to wind everyone up, so here are the facts:
Mayor Josh Morgan made his big pitch to the business community at the State of the City Address. Full coverage is here, but it amounted to an incentive program, reimbursing development charges, designed to boost the housing market.
The issue came to committee, as is normal, because the mayor has to get councillors to approve it. Councillors were not keen, as I reported. (Scroll down for that content.) They changed it to first-time buyers and extended the period to 10 years, and off it went to Full Council for approval.
And, when the agenda landed, there was a twist. Look at item 6.92: the letter from Jared Zaifman of the London Homebuilders Association, saying a number of undermining things, such as this:
While we understand the rationale for the shift to both restricting the program to first time buyers, and extending the term of the loan to 10 years, we fear this will severely hamper the success of the program.So, Mayor Morgan tried to push through an amendment taking it back to the original plan, but council sent the whole thing to the bleachers - that’s LFP coverage that dropped this afternoon. I was hoping Jack would write about that, so I didn’t need to explain it myself. Phew.
Quick comment: it’s not fully dead, and may yet come back in a workable form, but it’s hard to see this housing incentive as a success. At least two councillors said they won’t support it when it comes back. A mayor with more support, in council and elsewhere, would have seen this go much more smoothly. I refer you all to my past comments about a lack of leadership and direction at the top. This is not a good look going into a re-election campaign.
Free public transit for students
And keep scrolling down that Jack Moulton reporting (same link again) for the successful outcome of the Deputy Mayor’s big project - the pilot to get students out of yellow buses and on to the LTC3.
Flabbergasted opinion alert: this will help the budgets of families six weeks before the election. OK then.
And more but I am tired
I’ll be back with your local news ROUNDUP on Friday, and will add anything else that emerges. I know there was more but I think I mixed up the Ambien and the Turkish delight and I’m babbling about religious allegories in the work of C.S. Lewis, so I will stop.
Back with more. Look out for a bonus post coming soon!4
Note on A.I. use: I do not support use of generative A.I. to replace human creativity. I make use of A.I. support only where it can make me better or faster at a task I would already have undertaken. These reports were produced with help from an assistant created in ChatGPT, speeding the process while retaining editorial control in the hands of a human (me). I’m happy to discuss this.
One last bonus
Hey, do you want to know the secret of PR? Want to hear it in poetic form, read by a chuckling Scotsman with a speech impediment? You’re in luck!
Enough.
I’m a big James McAvoy fan, but no. I know he’s versatile but seriously? No.
Nice.
When I were a lad, we used to dream of living in a corridor. And I used to get a city bus to and from school.
Vague on purpose. I’m paying attention to the last election filings and will write about it when I have more time. Wish me luck with job applications!
I love your writing style and your comic relief. I wish you also covered world news.