This past April, sessions at the 2024 CHRA National Congress delved into pressing issues facing Canada’s housing and homelessness sector. Speakers Abe Oudshoorn, PhD, Associate Professor and Associate Director in the School of Nursing at Western University and the Arthur Labatt Family Chair in Nursing Leadership in Health Equity; Curtis Whiley, Founder of the Upper Hammonds Plains Community Land Trust; and Brett Wolfson-Stofko, PhD, Manager of Harm Reduction and Health Services for Homes First Society joined us to discuss innovative ways to create inclusive housing and address the root causes of homelessness. Read on to learn more.

 

Five Transformational Moves to End Homelessness in Canada

Abe Oudshoorn, PhD, Associate Professor and Acting Associate Dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University and the Arthur Labatt Family Chair in Nursing Leadership in Health Equity

Few approaches to mitigating or resolving Canada’s devastating homelessness crisis have addressed it as a structural problem via policy-based solutions. Complex health and social issues and poor housing infrastructure are some of the myriad factors that contribute to homelessness.

The Ontario’s Homelessness Plan research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), brings together a large team of researchers, advocates, and lived experts to develop a long-term comprehensive framework, grounded in a human rights approach, to end and prevent homelessness in Canada. Data collection included interviews with lived experts, policy makers, service providers, academics, and activists, and policy/literature reviews of local, national, and international research and strategies to prevent and end homelessness.

The data revealed five key policy moves and how they can transform how Canada works to prevent and end homelessness:

• Create income supports that lift people out of poverty. A basic income guarantee that is accessible, reliable, and meets the Universal Basic Income (UBI) Works Consensus Statement on a Basic Income Guarantee is recommended.
• Implement managed housing affordability in the form of effective rent control that is comprehensive, consistent, predictable, continuous, and thoughtful.
• Ensure stability of development of new deeply affordable housing supply, in the form of public housing.
• Create an intensification focused housing policy environment to ensure the development of high-density rental housing with legislated affordability.
• Have a system of supports to both facilitate re-housing and help people maintain their housing to ensure that homelessness episodes are rare and short.

The study asserts that implementing these policy solutions will bring Canada closer to a more ideal future where housing is a human right for all, and homelessness is prevented.

Learn more about this ongoing research project.

 

Driving Transformation​: The power of land trusts in African Nova Scotian communities​

Curtis Whiley, Founder, Upper Hammonds Plains Community Land Trust

Upper Hammonds Plains Community Land Trust (UHPCLT) is a community-led affordable housing focused CLT that serves a historically African Nova Scotian (ANS) community, providing opportunities for residents of Upper Hammonds Plains (UHP) to access affordable rental housing and pathways to homeownership through people-centered housing designs.

Many of the first wave of Black refugees from the war of 1812 arriving in Nova Scotia, meeting with racism from the local community, were settled in low-quality plots of land like UHP with tenuous land rights. This has contributed to longstanding racially based disparities in wealth, poverty, and land-based economic growth for the ANS community. Anti-black racism and disempowerment left the community vulnerable to land expropriation by the government.

Today, the UPH community is facing challenges including land acquisition by outside developers and overall cost of living increases, which have displaced many young people. Currently, only 38% of UHP is owned by community members with ancestral ties to the original settlers.

UHPCLT took part in CMHC’s Solutions Lab Challenge, focusing on ways to elevate its potential impact on the UHP and the wider ANS communities by exploring system-level barriers and their implications for the development of the land trust. Working with 85 participants in 15 in-person workshops, UHPCLT went through a co-design process to envision possibilities for the organization.

Participants went through discovery, development, and prototype planning phases to define priorities, strategies, next steps, and more. Working through the Solutions Lab process also helped UHPCLT to define values to help guide organizational decision making:

1. Sharing knowledge
2. Creating family
3. Empowering future generations
4. Caring for community
5. Deciding together
6. Cherishing our legacy
7. Centring equity and reflecting African Nova Scotian-ism

UHPCLT also committed to building relationships with and working alongside the local Mi’kmaq community.

Learn more about UHPCLT’s Solutions Lab process, their values, and their vision for the future.

 

Can’t House the Dead: Implementing harm reduction strategies in shelters, shelter-hotels, and supportive housing to improve resident safety

Brett Wolfson-Stofko, PhD, Manager of Harm Reduction & Health Services, Homes First Society

Homes First is a Toronto organization that supports over 2,500 clients. They operate nine shelters, 15 supportive housing buildings, two high-need 24/7 supportive housing buildings, and two specialized follow-up programs to keep clients housed and break the cycle of homelessness.

Homes First understands that many people use drugs to self-medicate to cope with past trauma, and that the unpredictable, illicit drug supply is the primary cause of overdose deaths. As a result, Homes First operates from a harm reduction perspective that accepts people for who they are and provides them with the supports and referrals needed to keep them healthy and alive so they can access treatment, secure housing, and pursue their goals. All the harm reduction strategies implemented are supported by research and are collectively effective at reducing HIV/HCV transmission, reducing EMS calls and hospitalizations, preventing overdose deaths, and increasing the uptake of health services and drug treatment, while not increasing crime or community drug use. Homes First harm reduction strategies include:

• 24/7 barrier-free access to harm reduction supplies (needle kits, smoking kits, and naloxone)
• Training staff in the use of naloxone, pulse-oximeters, and oxygen for overdose response
• Providing naloxone training to clients
• Conducting regular site walkarounds to find and respond to clients who’ve overdosed
• Creating individualized safety plans in collaboration with clients to improve safety
• Connecting clients to methadone, buprenorphine, and Safer Supply programs

Homes First also hosts onsite primary care clinics, onsite pharmacy, and an Overdose Prevention Site that provides an indoor, hygienic place for drug injection out of public view and under the supervision of trained staff. The co-localization of these health and support services onsite helps to reduce barriers and improve access. Homes First also collaborates with community harm reduction agencies that provide additional client supports.

Learn more about Homes First’s programs and services.

 

This post was written in collaboration with session speakers Abe Oudshoorn, Curtis Whiley, and Brett Wolfson-Stofko.