ekaplan's blog

It should come as no surprise that a person’s racial and ethnic identity affects their lived experiences in various ways, including shaping their socioeconomic, health, and safety outcomes. In major Canadian metropolitan centers like Toronto and Vancouver, this is evident in the overrepresentation of racialized individuals within the cities’ homeless populations. However, the relationship between homelessness and environmental racism in Canada is less obvious. 

Manitoba shelters are failing to meet the needs of transgender people. Many transgender people experiencing homelessness face barriers, discrimination, and stigma when accessing shelters or transitional housing programs. However, we believe that there are strategies that could help make transgender people experiencing homelessness feel safer and more comfortable when accessing shelters throughout the province.

Today is International Overdose Awareness Day, a day to raise awareness of and reduce the stigma of drug-related deaths.

Canada’s National Housing Strategy establishes “the right of every Canadian to access adequate housing”. Despite the establishment of this strategy, housing-related challenges are growing and the realization of the right to housing is far from reality for many. According to Statistics Canada:

We recently released the latest report in our series on the scale and severity of household food insecurity in Canada. After six PROOF reports, the story remains the same — food insecurity is a large problem that hasn’t gotten any better. This blog provides an overview of the findings highlighted in this report.

This blog aims to highlight some of the ways that researchers working in the homelessness sector can build trust with research participants while minimizing burnout and mental fatigue. The burnout and mental fatigue experienced by researchers is often discussed differently than for practitioners working in the homeless-serving sector since researchers are usually not viewed as “frontline workers”.

One third of youth experiencing homelessness in Canada are Indigenous. Among these Indigenous youth, almost half feel disconnected from their culture or community and over two thirds feel they are not connected to a specific area of Indigenous land.

Over the past decade, several plans to address the affordable housing and homelessness crisis in Canada have been implemented by governments at all levels. Although initiatives like the National Housing Strategy, Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy and the Rapid Housing Initiative are steps in the right direction, it’s clear there is still work to be done.

It’s been two years since the onset of COVID-19. At this point, the virus has left few of us unaffected. So, you likely won’t be surprised to hear that our research found that many young people experiencing homelessness were deeply impacted by the pandemic. With funding from Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab, we conducted a mixed-method study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth experiencing homelessness.

People who experience criminalization have the highest rates of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in Canada. Even though HCV can now be cured within 8-12 weeks using tablets with almost no side-effects, and tes