Search Library
Publication Date: 2021
All women (cis and trans) and gender diverse people have a human right to safe and dignified homes in Canada. Women and gender-diverse people who are multiply marginalized face unique barriers to accessing emergency shelter, housing and housing support.
Low-barrier, gender-focused drop-in programs play an important role in meeting the basic needs of this population, and provide accessible and meaningful forms of support, social connection and co...
Publication Date: 2018
Draft legislation prepared by legal scholars and civil society experts that offers suggestions on how the right to housing could be incorporated into the proposed National Housing Strategy legislation, consistent with international human rights law, and including mechanisms through which people affected by homelessness and inadequate housing can bring complaints about systemic violations and require the government to respond.
Publication Date: 2018
At a press conference in Ottawa on August 14, advocates released an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed by over 170 organizations and prominent Canadians urging the Prime Minister to make good on his commitment to the right to housing by enshrining that right in upcoming National Housing Strategy legislation.
The letter was penned by Amnesty International Canada, Campaign 2000: End Child and Family Poverty in Canada, Canada Withou...
Publication Date: 2018
Draft legislation prepared by legal scholars and civil society experts that offers suggestions on how the right to housing could be incorporated into the proposed National Housing Strategy legislation, consistent with international human rights law, and including mechanisms through which people affected by homelessness and inadequate housing can bring complaints about systemic violations and require the government to respond.
Publication Date: 2018
At a press conference in Ottawa on August 14, advocates released an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed by over 170 organizations and prominent Canadians urging the Prime Minister to make good on his commitment to the right to housing by enshrining that right in upcoming National Housing Strategy legislation.
The letter was penned by Amnesty International Canada, Campaign 2000: End Child and Family Poverty in Canada, Canada Withou...
Organization: Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario
Publication Date: 2016
A new report on Ontario’s Tenant Duty Counsel Program (TDCP) demonstrates that eviction prevention is a vital component of homelessness prevention. Based on a survey of more than 200 tenants accessing TDCP services in Toronto, Ottawa, and Hamilton, as well as interviews with service providers and legal workers at sites across the province, the report sheds light on the circumstances of tenants facing eviction, the supports they require, and the s...
Publication Date: 2016
Homelessness in Canada is a large and growing problem affecting more than 235,000 men, women, youth, and families per year, in urban, suburban, rural and Northern communities. Though it is produced by economic and policy drivers including colonization, income insecurity, and state withdrawal from housing provision, policies on homelessness tend to focus on service provision rather than addressing root causes. This article reviews activist, advoca...
Organization: Cities Centre, University of Toronto
Publication Date: 2014
Toronto is the site of a homelessness disaster in which thousands of people each year with no place of their own must stay in shelters, on the street, and in places not intended for human habitation. Toronto is also home to a housing crisis for low-income families. These two emergencies are not disconnected; yet in a city familiar with the sight of lone adults and youth sleeping on sidewalks, homelessness among families with children remains litt...
Organization: Centre for Urban and Community Studies; John Howard Society of Toronto
Publication Date: 2006
The relationship between homelessness and the criminal justice in Canada has not been extensively examined. Using the situation in Toronto as a case study, this report begins to fill this knowledge gap by exploring major questions about homelessness and incarceration, criminal behaviour by and against people who are homeless, and innovative programs and policies that can prevent or ameliorate homelessness and incarceration.
Publication Date: 2010
The successful integration of immigrants and refugees into a new society is based on their attainment of several basic needs, one of the most important of which is affordable, suitable and adequate housing. In recent years, there has been increasing attention paid to the role of housing in the integration process. This has prompted examinations of the links between access to affordable housing and the residential concentrations of newcomers and m...
Organization: Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership
Publication Date: 2013
Shelter use is increasing among families in large Canadian cities. But this statistic is just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath this trend is a wider problem: inadequate housing that places families at risk of homelessness. Homelessness among women and families is much more likely to be hidden than visible, and by its very nature, hidden homelessness is difficult to study.
Studies suggest strong links between inadequate and unaffordable housing, h...
Publication Date: 2007
This research bulletin draws on research prepared for the Housing and Homelessness Branch that received funding from the National Research Program of the National Homelessness Initiative. Researchers from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies and the John Howard Society conducted a literature review, an analysis of administrative data; a review of client files; a survey of 57 homeless individuals; in-depth interviews with 22 homeless individ...
Publication Date: 2000
This paper presents a feminist and community psychology analysis of ethical concerns that can arise throughout the process of doing research with women who are homeless. The unique contexts of the lives of women who are homeless demand that researchers redefine traditional ethical constructs such as consent, privacy, harm, and bias. Research that fails to do this may perpetuate the stereotyping, marginalization, stigmatization, and victimization...
Organization: Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN)
Publication Date: 2012
These guides were produced by the Women, Homelessness, and Community-Based Participatory Research project. They are based on the experiences and recommendations of a group of women experiencing poverty and homelessness, who have been involved with community-based participatory research.
Other guides, and the full project report, can be found here.
Guide for Grassroots Individuals and Groups Considering Community-Based Participatory Research on Wo...
Organization: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2012
The Women, Homelessness and Community-Based Participatory Research project grew out of a sense that while many CBPR projects addressing women and homelessness existed in communities across the country, information about these activities was not widely known. Hence one of the goals of the project was to create an inventory of such projects as a first step in knowledge exchange and potential networking among project actors.
Beyond the creation of a...
Organization: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2012
This study builds upon the findings of several recent participatory projects in which women facing homelessness have taken the lead and voiced their knowledge about the causes and consequences of, and the solutions to homelessness. Through those projects, women experiencing homelessness shared their insights about services, and about their own strengths.
Now, the time has come to assist services to adopt the good practices identified in those pro...
Publication Date: 2010
We will • Review the methodologies and findings of several projects on family homelessness • Share some insights from mothers participating in these projects • Propose recommendations for policy, practice, and future research
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2009
Homeless people are more often victims of crime than housed people. This chapter draws on a survey that explored the experiences and views of homeless individuals who have been involved with the criminal justice system or been victimized. The survey found that homeless individuals appreciate the need for law and order, but are critical of perceived unfair policing practices, especially differential treatment of racialized persons. Also, although...
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2009
How many of Toronto’s 30,000 homeless people end up in correctional facilities for reasons relating to their lack of housing? And how many of the 50,000 released each year from provincial correctional facilities in the Toronto area end up on the streets? Drawing on administrative data and interviews with homeless individuals, service providers, and key informants, the authors reveal that many homeless people are caught in a cycle of shelters, jai...
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2009
This year-long study compared the experiences of three kinds of homeless families who, at the beginning of the study, were living in a family shelter in Toronto: Canadian-born families, immigrant families with permanent resident status, and families headed by migrant women without permanent status. Although most families found housing within the year, not all were better off housed than they had been before becoming homeless or during their time...