M’akola Group of Societies aims “To provide homes primarily for Aboriginal people, where they can have pride and feel connected to traditional values and a community.”1 In 2007, M’akola identified the need to collect information on the impacts of their housing and inform future changes to their programming. The current three-year strategic plan for M’akola Group of Societies outlines, as one of their five key objectives, the need to develop and adopt a longer term framework for measuring and evaluating the need for housing by studying how tenants’ family situations are affected by their housing. M’akola contacted BC Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA) in November 2008 for a preliminary discussion of evaluation opportunities, and one result of the partnership is this evaluation framework, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Members of the M’akola Group of Societies, BCNPHA, and researcher Amy Salmon have worked together to develop the M’akola Housing Program Evaluation Framework. The evaluation will be undertaken under a separate project at a later date.

This report begins with the broader context: a description of the M’akola Housing Program, the goals of the program evaluation, and methods. Then the evaluation framework is presented, the indicators used in measurement and the data collection tools are described, and the implementation plan is explained. Materials included in the Appendices include the Tenant Survey (Appendix A), Tenant Survey Scale (for Interviewers) (Appendix B), Staff Survey (Appendix C) and Service Provider Survey (Appendix D). Referenced documents are listed at the end of the report.