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Publisher: Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Publication Date: 2015
The Governor General Award of Canada and the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem—these are some of this country’s highest forms of recognition in the profession of policing. These are just a couple of the awards that I have gotten for my outstanding work in policing—and at great peril to myself. But the good also has come with the horrendously bad.
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Publication Date: 2009
This project was inspired by its first photographer, Gafri. During a conversation about why people seem to believe that homelessness doesn’t exist here in York Region, he said “give me a camera, I’ll show them”. The Krasman Centre, in partnership with the York Region Alliance to End Homelessness began this project inspired by Photovoice, a participant action research method that puts cameras into the hands of those with lived experience to docume...
Publication Date: 2009
A 26 year old man is homeless since leaving his parent's house as a teenager.
My troubles in life started out in the usual, "I hate everyone and I know what I'm doing" kind of way. Just to let you know, I was wrong! I moved out on my own with some rather hateful words to my parents - my father - to be precise. I stayed on a friend's couch for the first day and they got me to the Catherine Booth House. I thought I was going to be my own person goi...
Publication Date: 2009
A young man makes his way across Canada by hitchhiking and hopping trains …
If I was to speak of homelessness, I suppose I would have to tell a bit of my history so here I go.
I was thrown out of the house when I was thirteen by my ultra-conservative parents who didn't quite know what to do with me. I believe they meant well but in the end, I nearly starved. I didn't know what a "soup kitchen" was or what the term "panhandle" meant. And sadly, wh...
Publication Date: 2009
A middle class, small-town girl that journeys between rags and riches…
Being involved with The Homeless Hub project allows me to give back by telling my story, which is two fold: as a small town, teenage girl who was kicked out; and as a wife of a substance user, who asked her husband to leave, twice.
In my late teens, despite being raised with good values, I got kicked out. While I had the typical teenage "I want my freedom" belligerence, I was...
Publication Date: 2009
Changes are an important part of life - a part of life that can be more easily embraced with a helpful hand from your community.
I had the perfect life, a house with a beautiful backyard, a man that cared, a baby boy, a dog, and a cat, all at the age of twenty-three. The one thing I have learned in my thirty-seven years is that change always comes. It can be like a soft breeze or a horrific hurricane that you're not sure you'll survive.
The chan...
Publication Date: 2009
Here's something I wrote in one of my first few pieces of poetry. I always said it to myself in overcoming hardships and still do whenever I'm in a foul mood.
At 13 years old, I went away for a weekend with my mom. When we came back, we noticed all my things were thrown in her room. Someone else's things were in my space. All this because someone offered more rent money to the lady we were living with. I went back to see the lady to bare a fair s...
Publication Date: 2009
There is a story about me and my own children when we used to live in Hill Top, a public housing ghetto in my home town
This is a story about my children and me when we used to live in Hill Top, a public housing ghetto in my hometown. One night, in the nineties, I was evicted. I lost my children that day. It had happened once before when they were smaller. Then I got sick.
When I lived in Hill Top I was a single mom. I was working as a waitress...
Publication Date: 2009
A man finds a way to get housed…
Being homeless, courting park benches and bus shelters, sleeping under trees and at various other shelters, I decided to laugh at life before it laughs at me.
I was wary of organized shelters, having heard stories of theft and violence that invariably occurs there. Winter drove me to seek the climatic warmth of the Salvation Army. I was thrown out of the hostels so many times, not for violence or uttering, but f...
Publication Date: 2009
"I am only allowed $554 for my rent (when you are on Social Assistance) for a three bedroom, which is absolutely ridiculous."
First of all I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell you about my personal experience with homelessness and housing instability. I am a single mother of three children. The two youngest ones live with me and the eldest is in a group home due to his behavioural problems.
It was 2004 when I became ho...
Publication Date: 2009
I came to Canada because I feared the Taliban and other extremist Muslims. This is my family's story of how we came to Canada and the period of time we were homeless.
I am a thirty three year old single mother of four boys, ranging in age from four to thirteen. I am a refugee claimant from Afghanistan. I came to Canada because I feared the Taliban and other extremist Muslims. This is my family's story of how we came to Canada and the period of ti...
Publication Date: 2010
Federal and state officials have grown increasingly concerned about the large number of individuals with serious mental illness who leave state prisons without health insurance and therefore without access to treatments and services to help them live successfully in the community and avoid recidivism and use of emergency care. Their disability and low income would qualify many for Medicaid, but complex eligibility rules and application procedur...
Publication Date: 2000
San Francisco researchers have found that many HIV-positive people who were homeless or lived in marginal housing were doing a good job of complying with their drug regimens. Each of the independent adherence measures was closely associated with patients' viral load at the time the adherence measures were obtained.
Publication Date: 1998
Columbus OH is considering a plan under which homeless men who are regularly intoxicated could no longer be housed in a large downtown shelter.
Publication Date: 1999
A bill in the California legislature that would get homeless people with serious mental illness off the streets and into treatment only needs the signature of Gov. Gray Davis. The bill would expand existing services in order to determine whether they keep people with mental illness out of jail.
Publication Date: 2000
The Street Case Management Project in Minneapolis recently won the Thomas M. Wernert Award for Innovation in Community Behavioral Healthcare from the Boston-based Technical Assistance Collaborative Inc. This effort is a client-focused project for homeless people with chronic alcoholism and drug abuse.