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): Naomi Nichols, Carey Doberstein
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2016
This book was produced to support continued momentum for our collective efforts to make change. We set out to shine a light on the growing body of research about systems-level approaches to homelessness in North America as well as the growing number of initiatives being implemented by diverse groups of researchers, community agencies and different levels of government. What has emerged from this book has surpassed our expectations.
Author(s): Carey Doberstein, Jasmine Reimer
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2016
This chapter presents the origins and purposes of interagency councils in North America and contemplates the extent to which they have led to progress in identifying and implementing solutions to homelessness, both in the U.S. and in Canada. We begin by exploring the roots and organization of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). We track the key developments of the USICH, first in the context of an increased awareness of...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2016
Homelessness is a systemic public policy problem, involving numerous sectors, institutions and agencies and therefore requires integrated system responses in terms of governance and policy. This chapter responds to the need for a conceptual framework to understand and guide efforts towards system planning and integration from a governance and policy perspective. An integrated ‘system’ is characterized by a coordinated set of policies and programs...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein, Naomi Nichols
Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2016
Homelessness is a systemic problem involving numerous sectors, institutions and agencies and, therefore, requires more integrated system responses in terms of governance, policy and programs. The widespread homelessness experienced in our communities indeed reveals deep structural inequities in our economy and society that ought to be addressed, but also represents a systematic governance failure characterized by a lack of ownership of this issue...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein, Alison Smith
Organization: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Publication Date: 2015
Not the draconian character that many homelessness activists feared, Stephen Harper has a mixed record on homelessness and affordable housing. On one hand, he unexpectedly came to support evidence-based policy innovations such as Housing First, and is encouraging local communities to gather better data on the chronically homeless population through a nationally coordinated point-in-time count in January 2016. On the other hand, and more important...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publication Date: 2015
Abstract:
Collaborative governance institutions consisting of government and civil society actors often emerge to solve complex policy problems. Yet decades of research on collaborative governance has found that realizing the ‘collaborative advantage’ is often very difficult given the multitude of actors, organizations and interests to be managed. This article deploys a participant observation approach that also harnesses data from a natural expe...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publication Date: 2014
This article introduces the concept of “metagovernance” into the Canadian public administration literature. The term captures the relationship and tension between the willingness of the state to engage with civil society representatives in substantive policy planning and decision-making via purpose-focused governance networks, while maintaining some degree of control over their activity consistent with traditional notions of democratic accountabi...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein, Heather Millar
Publication Date: 2014
This article examines the interaction of different modes and levels of legitimacy within network governance institutions over time. Drawing on new theoretical directions in European governance studies and empirical findings from Canada, we contend that whereas input legitimacy can be exchanged, or traded-off, with output legitimacy to reinforce the overall legitimacy of a network governance institution, “throughput legitimacy” functions as a nece...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publisher: University of Toronto
Publication Date: 2014
Why has Vancouver developed and implemented more effective homelessness policy in the last 20 years than Toronto, despite sharing similar homelessness challenges? Finding that none of the traditional theories for policy divergence—such as executive and council leadership, local political institutions or ideational paradigms—adequately explain the policy variation, this dissertation identifies one key difference in the two cities: the properties a...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publication Date: 2012
Despite not having explicit authority to legislate on matters local in nature, in 2000 the federal government launched the National Homelessness Initiative (NHI). I argue that this federal program, in many critical aspects, mirrors a governance model developed in the European Union called the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a model developed in an institutional context whereby the European Commission has no formal authority to coerce member st...
Author(s): Carey Doberstein
Publication Date: 2011
Urban development agreements (UDAs) in Canada represented an innovative governance approach that involved all three levels of government and civil society organizations jointly deliberating and setting policy to address enduring and seemingly intractable issues like homelessness and economic development. By 2010, however, all UDAs in Canada had been terminated. This article applies a new institutionalism framework to analyze and explain the creat...