{"id":700656,"date":"2026-05-29T03:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/700656\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T03:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T03:03:11","slug":"ottawa-family-living-in-tent-amid-housing-crunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/700656\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa family living in tent amid housing crunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Ottawa mother is sharing her story after she, her two teens, and her adult son found themselves living in a tent in the woods. CTV\u2019s Katelyn Wilson reports. <\/p>\n

An Ottawa mother is sharing her story after she, her two teenagers and adult son found themselves living in a tent in the woods, highlighting what advocates call hidden homelessness. <\/p>\n

For the past few weeks, Amy Ayres says affordability and barriers to accessing shelter have left her family with nowhere else to go. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey either didn\u2019t have anywhere that would accommodate us as a whole or there was no room,\u201d said Ayres. <\/p>\n

The tent, tucked in an Ottawa conservation area became home for her family for the past few weeks, including their dog and cat.<\/p>\n

\"\"Amy Ayres Amy Ayres stands beside a tent in Ottawa, where she has been living with her three sons. May 28, 2026. (Katelyn Wilson\/CTV News Ottawa) <\/p>\n

She says the hardest part has been trying to keep her family together while running out of places that would take all of them, including their pets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bigger picture of it to me is us as a unit,\u201d said Ayres. \u201cIt\u2019s keeping us grounded. It\u2019s keeping us focused and mentally stable and I\u2019m trying to explain to the City of Ottawa outreach people, it\u2019s important we stay together.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ayres said a friend has since offered the family a temporary place to stay, but finding a permanent home remains out of reach.<\/p>\n

After the pandemic, she left her job as a personal support worker for mental health reasons and now relies on social assistance. Her oldest son works full-time in fast food, but says even with their combined income, rent is still unaffordable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith our combined income, you\u2019re looking at maybe $4,000 and once you pay rent you have to pay hydro, food, medical expenses, we have vehicles, we have insurance \u2014 where are we going to come up with all of this?\u201d Ayres said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Amy Ayres A tent in an Ottawa conservation area where a family has been living for weeks. May 28, 2026. (Katelyn Wilson\/CTV News Ottawa) <\/p>\n

She also says being on Ontario Works has made finding housing more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re labelled, so you\u2019re skipped over or told \u2018I\u2019m sorry,\u2019 and they move on to the next. So, it\u2019s been difficult to find somebody who\u2019s going to rent to us.\u201d <\/p>\n

Her story comes as Ottawa\u2019s shelter system remains under pressure and the number of households waiting for subsidized housing continues to grow.<\/p>\n

More than 16,000 households were on the city\u2019s subsidized housing waitlist at the end of last year, with an average wait time of five to eight years, according to a City of Ottawa staff report. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have families and children as the biggest group of people in our shelter system, and we can absolutely be doing more than we are and that\u2019s not on the city only that\u2019s a national issue that is a provincial issue and we need those levels of government to step up.\u201d said Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa. <\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 40 per cent of Canadians can afford $1,700 a month as the max and that is not what we\u2019re building for. So, I think we need to not just be building more, but we need to be making sure it\u2019s targeted for who needs the housing and at what income level.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Amy Ayres Amy Ayres stands in her tent, where she has been living with her two teen and one adult son. May 28, 2026. (Katelyn Wilson\/CTV News Ottawa) <\/p>\n

For Ayres, the first step is finding a permanent place of her own to call home. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t where I want to be. I didn\u2019t ask to be here,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can happen to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayres says she has recently received a call from a city outreach worker about a possible housing option, but for now she says she\u2019s grateful her friend has given her family a temporary place to stay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Ottawa mother is sharing her story after she, her two teens, and her adult son found themselves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[712,49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-700656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}