Bringing housing to the homeless

More than a thousand people now have a roof over their heads thanks to a national program aimed at helping the homeless get off the street.

At Home/Chez Soi kicked off at the end of November and is being run by the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Homelessness is often most visible in urban centres.The experimental project will provide housing to 1,325 participants, but will also track an additional 960 homeless people. Both groups will be offered a range of social services.

The MHCC will study the two groups to examine how they can better serve the homeless. They will also study whether providing housing leads to any cost-saving in providing other social services.

A growing practice in North America over the past two decades, the housing-first approach breaks away from the current treatment-first one, where an individual is required to seek help with, or resolve, their mental health or addiction problems before they can receive housing.

“[In this country] we tend to fund treatment and housing from different areas and the job to integrate them is left to the individual. We are trying to tie them together and make sure housing is offered as an initial response and not something further down the line,” says Dr. Paula Goering, the Research Lead for the At Home/Chez Soi Project.

The initiative is taking place in five cities — Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, and Moncton — and is the largest housing-first project undertaken in Canada.

Those given shelter will have to pay a portion of their rent, meet with a staff member weekly, and comply with the terms of their lease, as any tenant would.

Goering says low vacancy rates and landlord reluctance were raised as concerns, “but so far, and its early days, we are pleased and surprised at the willingness of landlords to come forward and offer spaces.”

Toronto a template

Nick Falvo, a former mental health outreach worker, has undertaken an independent study of a similar housing-first experiment that began in Toronto in 2005. He says Toronto’s experiment, the Streets to Homes Program, which also housed homeless individuals, shows a housing-first model works.

We are trying to . . . make sure housing is offered as an initial response and not something further down the line.

“The results speak for themselves. The Toronto project makes a strong case that people use drugs and alcohol less, and seek help more quickly when they are housed,” says Falvo

He says he is confident doing a similar experiment on a national level will open the door to more research money dedicated to housing-first strategies.

The Toronto case saw a decrease in the financial dependence of the participants on a range of social services from emergency services, hospital stays, and corrections services. They also reported a decline in depression and an overall improvement in health of the housed participants.

The At Home/Chez Soi program has received $110 million in funding from the federal government and will run until 2013.

Just a fad?

Larger-scale housing-first projects are now at work in approximately 40 cities in the United States and several smaller-scale projects are taking place in Canada.

But not everyone is onboard with the housing-first strategy. National Post columnist Lorne Gunter says it is a “fad,” just as the trend in the 1980s was an emphasis on building more social housing.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a high number of drug users living in unstable housing, shelters or on the streets in Vancouver.

In a column he wrote in response to Alberta’s announcement of a provincial homelessness initiative last year, Gunter wrote he believed housing-first initiatives were a misuse of taxpayer’s money.

“At least two-thirds of the homeless are on the streets because they are off their meds or addicted to drugs. Poverty is not the root cause of their status. So even if you build them new affordable housing, they will still be mentally ill or addicts,” wrote Gunter.

He advocates a system where the participant would have to report to authorities to ensure they are continuing their treatment.

But like it or not, says Falvo, this program may serve as a catalyst to change the way we think about administering social services in this country.

“The tide is shifting,” he says, and predicts housing-first models will soon be picked up by municipalities across the country.