Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness is the largest national research institute devoted to homelessness in Canada. The COH is the curator of the Homeless Hub.
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Author(s): Joshua Evans, Jeffrey R. Masuda
Publication Date: 2019
The management of homelessness has taken various forms over time. In 2003, the U.S. federal government significantly shifted its approach, ambitiously committing to end homelessness within 10 years by targeting the chronically homeless using the Housing First model. This approach to homelessness has rapidly spread across North America and beyond. This article is concerned with how the mobility of these 10-year plans has been realized. Drawing on ...
Author(s): Denise Lamanna, Yona Lunsky, Sophia Wen, Denise Dubois, Vicky Stergiopoulos
Publication Date: 2019
This column describes the development of a partnership between health care, housing, and intellectual disability services to support efforts by homeless adults with intellectual disabilities to exit homelessness. Applying a Housing First approach and philosophy, the partners launched a pilot intervention, which at its first phase engaged 26 homeless adults with intellectual disabilities in Toronto. This cross-sector service model was acceptable t...
Author(s): Raphaël Morisseau-Guillot, Diane Aubin, Julie-Marguerite Deschênes, Milena Gioia, Ashok Malla, Pasquale Bauco, Marie-Ève Dupont, Amal Abdel-Baki
Publication Date: 2019
Youth homelessness is a complex phenomenon as well as an important public health issue often compounded by mental illness of varying severity, in turn creating numerous deleterious consequences. While emergency health services usage remains high, access to mental health services is arduous and conventional interventions often fall short on providing integrated care and seldom lead to sustained positive outcomes for this group. From this observati...
Author(s): Diane Santa Maria, Paula Cuccaro, Kimberly Bender, Stanley Cron, Micki Fine, Erica Sibinga
Publication Date: 2019
Evidence of the acceptability and potential efficacy of mindfulness strategies with at-risk youth is mounting. Yet only a few studies have assessed these strategies among youth experiencing homelessness (YEH).
We conducted a mixed methods feasibility study of an adapted mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) with sheltered YEH. The MBI consisted of five 1.5-h sessions delivered at a youth homeless shelter over 2.5 weeks. A one-group pre/post-test d...
Author(s): Carolyn B. Swope, Diana Hernàndez
Publication Date: 2019
Housing is a major pathway through which health disparities emerge and are sustained over time. However, no existing unified conceptual model has comprehensively elucidated the relationship between housing and health equity with attention to the full range of harmful exposures, their cumulative burden and their historical production. We synthesized literature from a diverse array of disciplines to explore the varied aspects of the relationship be...
Author(s): Amy Van Berkum, Abe Oudshoorn
Organization: Journal of Social Inclusion
Publication Date: 2019
Homelessness is an ongoing social challenge effecting women in unique ways. The purpose of this research study was to understand a network of health and social services accessed by women experiencing homelessness, and how individuals successfully or unsuccessfully navigated these services. Data were collected utilizing a participatory application of the PhotoVoice method, grounded in a critical feminist intersectional perspective. Six women with...
Author(s): Madison Hainstock, Jeffrey R. Masuda
Publication Date: 2019
People experiencing any length of homelessness exhibit resilience and ingenuity in navigating geographies of street-level survival, in which food features prominently. The concept of ‘foodscapes’ has illuminated complex and often contradictory spatial and relational constructions embedded in food procurement routines (Miewald and McCann, 2014). On one hand, places of food provision offer spaces of refuge and socialization that contribute to a pos...
Author(s): Latimer EA, Rabouin D, Cao Z, Ly A, Powell G, Adair CE, Sareen J, Somers JM, Stergiopoulos V, Pinto AD, Moodie EEM, Veldhuizen SR
Publication Date: 2019
A significant proportion of homeless individuals experience mental illness. Housing First (HF), which provides immediate access to subsidized housing together with support services, has proven to be the most effective approach at helping such individuals access and maintain permanent housing. Previous analyses, using mostly before-and-after comparisons or quasi-experimental designs, have reported significant cost offsets associated with the provi...
Struggles, successes, and setbacks: Youth aging out of child welfare in a subsidized housing program
Author(s): Lisa Schelbe
Publication Date: 2019
Youth aging out of the child welfare system report high rates of unstable housing and homelessness which has been associated with problems including employment, education, health and mental health. This study used ethnographic data to examine a program providing subsidized apartments to youth aging out. The study sought to understand youths' and service providers' perceptions and experiences about the program. Receiving services and stable housin...
Author(s): Brittany Bingham, Akm Moniruzzaman, Michelle Patterson, Jitinder Sareen, Jino Distasio, John O’Neil and Julian M. Somers
Publication Date: 2019
Indigenous people are over represented among homeless populations worldwide and the prevalence of Indigenous homelessness appears to be increasing in Canadian cities. Violence against Indigenous women in Canada has been widely publicized but has not informed the planning of housing interventions. Despite historical policies leading to disenfranchisement of Indigenous rights in gender-specific ways, little is known about contemporary differences i...
Author(s): Richard Pereira
Publication Date: 2015
A peer-reviewed paper in the World Economic Review, in which Richard Pereira identifies numerous options for finding or generating the revenue required to support a universal basic income in Canada.
Author(s): Harvey Stevens & Wayne Simpson
Publisher: Journals University of Toronto Press
Publication Date: 2017
In this paper, Wayne Simpson and Harvey Stevens of the University of Manitoba explain how a $51 billion federal basic income program or a $82 billion federal-provincial basic income program could be funded by converting select Non-Refundable Tax Credits (NRTCs) and the Federal Sales Tax Credit (GST) into the revenue base for a partial basic income, with significant positive impact on the incidence and depth of poverty and on income inequality in...
Author(s): Getinet Ayano, Light Tsegay, Mebratu Abraha, Kalkidan Yohannes
Publication Date: 2019
Globally, suicide is a major public health problem among homeless people. Suicidal ideation and attempt are remarkably higher among homeless people as compared to the general population and they are linked with greater risk of complete suicide. However, no systematic review and meta-analysis has been conducted to report the consolidated magnitude of suicidal ideation and attempt among homeless people. We searched PubMed, Embase, and Scopus to ide...
Author(s): Elizabeth Guevara, Mireille Valois, Ina Winkelmann, Ridha Joober, Karen Goldberg, Srividya N. Iyere
Publication Date: 2019
The availability of affordable, youth-friendly, recovery-oriented housing for persons with first-episode psychosis is limited. We report on the conceptualization, implementation and implications of a pilot housing project combining the principles of specialized early intervention for psychosis and those of “Housing First,” which holds much promise to address this service gap.
Author(s): Andrew D. Reynolds, Shantiqua Neely, Delana Murdock
Publication Date: 2019
Over the past decade there have been considerable developments in the use of data in the field of child and family homelessness. The development of high-quality data collection processes—including Housing Management Information Systems (HMIS), community point-in-time counts, and school district data and evaluation infrastructure—has given nonprofit and social sector leaders unprecedented access to client-level data. However, it remains a challeng...
Author(s): Marichelle C. Leclair, Félicia Deveaux, Laurence Roy, Marie-Hélène Goulet, Eric A. Latimer, Anne G. Crocker
Publication Date: 2019
Housing First is increasingly put forward as an important component of a pragmatic plan to end homelessness. The literature evaluating the impact of Housing First on criminal justice involvement has not yet been systematically examined. The objective of this systematic review is to examine the impact of Housing First on criminal justice outcomes among homeless people with mental illness. This systematic review suggests that Housing First, on aver...
Author(s): Diana Hernàndez, Carolyn B. Swope
Publication Date: 2019
The links between housing and health are now known to be strong and multifaceted and to generally span across 4 key pillars: stability, affordability, quality and safety, and neighborhood opportunity. Housing disparities in the United States are tenaciously patterned along axes of social inequality and contribute to the burden related to persistently adverse health outcomes in affected groups. Appreciating the multidimensional relationship betwee...
Author(s): Carole Zufferey, Amy Parkes
Publication Date: 2019
The idyllic imaginaries of rural life and representations of homelessness as an urban problem has rendered invisible the existence of homelessness outside urban capital cities. This research explored how service providers working in regional and metropolitan South Australia responded to and constructed intersectional disadvantages faced by homeless parents. This paper presents a thematic analysis of eight qualitative in-depth interviews, highligh...
Author(s): Gregg M. Olsen
Publication Date: 2019
Welfare states are built upon three central social policy pillars: (1) income programs, including an assortment of income maintenance and security benefits; (2) social services, comprising a diverse constellation of provisions, which furnish care such as health care and education, and “in kind” benefits; and (3) protective legislation, encompassing a dense web of proactive and preventative laws, rights, and entitlements, such as health and safety...
Author(s): Andrew Ivsins, Cecilia Benoita, Karen Kobayashia, Susan Boyd
Publication Date: 2019
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood is commonly associated with stigmatized and criminalized activities and attendant risks and harms. Many spaces/places in this urban neighbourhood are customarily portrayed and experienced as risky and harmful, and are implicated in experiences of structural (and physical) violence and marginalization. Drawing on 50 qualitative interviews, this paper explores how spaces/places frequently used by s...