| Phase: |
Theme |
| Theme: | Theme 2 - Sustaining successful EXITS from homelessness (THEME2) |
| Status: | Active |
| Start Date: | 2022-09-07 |
| End Date: | 2024-12-31 |
| Principal Investigator |
| Fast, Danya |
Highly Qualified Personnel
Project Overview
In response to ongoing housing and overdose crises, municipalities across Greater Vancouver are implementing and scaling up housing and residential substance use treatment interventions for young people who use drugs (YPWUD) in an effort to reduce harms. However, our preliminary research demonstrates that, for many YPWUD, complex institutional trajectories that include periods of time residing in government-subsidized housing and residential treatment settings, as well as engagement with government care and criminal justice systems, can actually foster multiple pathways to streetbased homelessness. The proposed longitudinal qualitative and community-based participatory research study will explore the individual, social, structural, and institutional dynamics that shape young people’s pathways into homelessness across time. A key focus will be on how diverse YPWUD navigate cycles of housing and homelessness in relation to encounters with other systems of care and supervision. Findings will inform innovative youth-dedicated housing and residential treatment programs in Greater Vancouver and beyond.
Outputs
| Title |
Category |
Date |
Authors |
| 'I'm just trying to stay': Experiences of temporal uncertainty in modular and supportive housing among young people who use drugs in VancouverOver the past decades the city of Vancouver has attempted to address a lack of affordable housing for it most marginalized citizens, including young people who use drugs (YPWUD), by expanding access to temporary modular and supportive housing. These projects are guided by a Housing First philosophy that recognizes housing as a key social determinant of health. In this commentary, we draw attention to how, rather than providing a clear pathway to greater stability, modular and supportive housing have become part of broader “institutional circuits” that reinforce residential transience and what we call “temporal uncertainty.” We use this term to describe a painful and frustrating inability to move though time in desired ways despite the promise of greater stability that housing is supposed to engender. Rather than allowing young people to establish more predictable day-to-day rhythms and routines and enact the futures they imagine for themselves, residing in modular and supportive housing environments often generates significant instability and uncertainty. We believe that Housing First interventions have significant potential to reduce harms and improve outcomes for YPWUD. However, chronic temporal uncertainty must be addressed, including through the creation of more permanent, desirable social housing, extending supports to young people beyond tenancies, and working with them to develop timelines and plans for what happens next British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, University of British Columbia | Publication | 2022-12-01 | Daniel Manson, Thomas Kerr, Danya Fast |
| Housing First, but what comes next? Exploring young people’s return pathways to instability during a housing crisis in Vancouver CanadaHousing instability, mental health, and homelessness among young people who use drugs (YPWUD) in Vancouver, Canada have increasingly been framed through a language of crisis. The declaration of these overlapping crises has prompted a wide range of targeted interventions, including the rapid expansion of “supportive housing” projects that integrate housing-based substance use and mental health care supports for young people who use drugs. There is growing evidence demonstrating that these models are effective at stabilizing people who are experiencing protracted housing instability, mental illness, and substance use related health concerns. Yet, it is critical to understand how young people’s experiences of uncertainty and precarity persist despite being housed in order to identify potential return pathways to unstable housing. We recount stories of three young people who have lived in supportive housing buildings to demonstrate that achieving the relative stability afforded by these interventions is partially contingent on maintaining a delicate balance between being in a state of “too much” or “too little” in crisis. While being in crisis makes young people visible to forms of support, our findings demonstrate that entering periods of personal crisis may reopen pathways into unstable housing by activating undesirable institutional responses that conflict with young people’s sense of autonomy. British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, University of British Columbia | Publication | 2023-04-23 | Daniel Manson, Danya Fast |
| Making Homes in Un-Homelike Places among Young People in Vancouver: Implications for Homelessness PreventionThis article explores the experiences of young people navigating an evolving system of housing and homelessness services in Vancouver, Canada. Despite recent shifts toward Housing First policies and calls for prevention-oriented initiatives, many young people continue to rely on temporary emergency accommodations. Amid a surge in youth homelessness and unstable housing in Vancouver, our study examines young people’s “homing” strategies across time and place and temporary and more permanent living environments. We draw from an ongoing ethnographic study that began in 2021 and has involved over 70 interviews and 100 h of fieldwork with 54 young people aged 19 to 29. Our findings emphasize that feeling at home extends beyond having a roof over one’s head for an extended period of time. A focus on homing strategies—that is, the day-to-day practices, routines, and forms of sociality that generate a sense of stability and care even in un-homelike places—highlights how young people can be better supported in making themselves at home in the places where they live, potentially preventing returns to street-based homelessness. This study contributes insights to youth homelessness prevention policies, urging a strengths-based approach that aligns with young people’s needs, priorities, and desires for homemaking. British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, University of British Columbia | Publication | 2024-11-08 | Daniel Manson, Danya Fast |
| Vancouver Needs a Real Plan for Homeless YouthThis is an opinion editorial written in collaboration with our team's Youth Health Advisory Council--a diverse group of young people with lived and living experience of substance use, mental health, unstable housing, and homelessness. It also includes the perspectives of young people who attended a two-day youth housing summit to discuss their challenges navigating unstable housing in Vancouver. The article argues that efforts to address youth homelessness are urgently needed, and the City of Vancouver needs to create a tangible action plan for addressing youth homelessness and unstable housing. Currently the Housing Vancouver strategy (the city’s 10-year housing plan) acknowledges that youth are at an increased risk of homelessness. But it contains no measures or housing targets earmarked specifically for youth. The City of Vancouver needs to create a tangible action plan for addressing youth homelessness and unstable housing. British Columbia Centre on Substance Use, University of British Columbia | Publication | 2023-12-11 | Daniel Manson, Danya Fast |
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