Harvey Low, Senior Analyst with the Social Policy Analysis & Research Unit at the City of Toronto discusses his work in supporting policy and program development and the changing face of homelessness.
Q: What is your area of research?
A: The role that the Social Development Finance and Administration Division's Social Policy Analysis and Research Unit is responsible for is the assistance and development of social policy in the area of homelessness. Most of the work that we do here focuses on gathering information and statistics in order to get a better understanding of the homelessness situation. We collect and work with information and staff from other divisions in the city. We also work with other levels of government in collecting and analyzing information about the nature and extent of homelessness. A lot of the work that we do here is to support policy and program development through the use of metrics.
Q: What makes this research area important?
A: Like any social issue, you must look at the issue beyond its borders. In other words, if you’re looking at homelessness, we provide the benefit of looking at homelessness from different angles. It’s not only looking at homelessness from the angle of people who are just homeless or the housing market, but we would be looking at related factors such as the economy. We look at trends in unemployment, labour force rates and metrics around healh conditions, use of food banks. We look at different angles and try to apply them through the lens of homelessness. We try to step away and not just look at it from a program service point of view but to begin to understand the problem by looking at its various relations to other external factors that would influence homelessness.
Let’s start with the profile of homelessness. Most people think that a homeless person is a typical single male on the street who's an alcoholic and that’s far from the truth. The face of homelessness has changed and continues to change. What we’re finding now is that the profile of homelessness is now no longer a single white male phenomenon but it also includes families. In fact, families staying in the shelter system have increased over the last decade and seems to continue to increase. We’re seeing a lot more families with children, a lot more lone parents with children so it’s important to understand that the face of homelessness is beginning to change. If you don’t understand how that’s changing then its going to be much more difficult to address the problem.
The second thing we’re finding is the lengths of time people stay in shelters is changing as well. The average number of days that people stay in the shelter system has been increasing over time and that brings together a much more difficult challenge in terms of service delivery and meeting the needs of those individuals. There must be reasons why they’re staying in the shelters longer.
The third point is the reasons people are staying in the shelters is also changing, becoming much more varied in its reasons. Some people are here because they’re using the shelter system as temporary housing. Others are living rough on the street and those numbers are going up as well. The City is doing its best to monitor that situation through an ongoing count of those people. These myriad of factors are becoming challenges to make sure we meet the needs of those individuals. We’re seeing a lot more children and youth in the system. Reasons why they leave the shelter system is also very complex. They don’t necessarily leave because they find housing. Some people may leave and come back into a shelter a couple days, weeks, or months later so the variations in shelter use are also changing. There’s a vast number of individuals that are one-time users of the shelter system. They come and use the system and we never see them again.
Q: Who needs to be involved in addressing these issues?
A: Like addressing any social phenomenon or issue, we can't do it alone. We rely a lot on our network, not only other divisions within the City, but our network in the community. We work a lot with the community sector in addressing these issues. They're critical, basically the eyes of the community. They understand the problems and also work with the homeless population. Working with them as a stakeholder and a key partner is crucial.
The other stakeholders who are crucial are other levels of government. The provincial and federal governments provide a myriad of programs in the area of housing and homelessness and there's definitely a need to make sure that all levels of government are working in a coordinated fashion to address this problem.