| Phase: |
Theme |
| Theme: | Theme 5 - Leveraging DATA and TECHNOLOGY to drive Policy and Practice (THEME5) |
| Status: | Active |
| Start Date: | 2021-06-16 |
| End Date: | 2024-12-31 |
| Principal Investigator |
| Nichols, Naomi |
Project Overview
This project aims to produce and mobilize descriptive and analytical knowledge, to support the youth homelessness sector in developing cross-sectoral, rights-based data interventions and infrastructure that prioritizes youth homelessness prevention. The project aims to develop open-access data asset maps and data quality assessment reports for stakeholders to adapt for their prevention needs.
Outputs
| Title |
Category |
Date |
Authors |
| The Implementation of Coordinated Access to End Homelessness in Ontario, CanadaTo receive federal homelessness funding, cities in Canada must adhere to federal policy directives associated with the government of Canada’s Reaching Home program. These directives include the implementation of a homelessness management information system (HMIS) and a Coordinated Access process. In this article, we draw on 90 in-depth interviews and extensive policy and institutional analysis to assess the implementation of Coordinated Access in one Ontario city. Our findings suggest that none of the four pillars of Coordinated Access (access, assessment, prioritization, matching, and referral) work as intended. Structural and systemic challenges (e.g., related to housing stock, staff turnover, inaccessibility of shelters, criminalizing municipal bylaws, and the reliability of the assessment tool) undermine the efficacy of the process as a means of improving transparency, service coordination, and housing outcomes. Despite being an early adopter of the Coordinated Access process, this Ontario municipality continues to struggle with a growing housing affordability crisis and an unhoused population. Trent University | Publication | 2024-04-25 | "Mary Anne Martin", Naomi Nichols |
| The Politics of Prevention and Government Responses to Homelessness Recently, the logic of public health prevention has found a foothold in research and advocacy about homelessness. From a commonsense perspective, the prevention of a social problem like homelessness is an objectively positive aim. However, in the realm of social and health policy, the concept of prevention is not simply a common-sense word. It is part of a wider set of rationalities and technologies of governance which operate in and through the institution of public health. Research demonstrates that state-driven interventions designed to advance the health of a population often pose problems for particular groups. Prevention efforts, and their differential effects, thus have the potential to illuminate how state-interventions pursued with the objective of safe-guarding the public in general may simultaneously exacerbate specific structural and systemic forms of inequality. In this article, we probe the ethical, empirical, and political dimensions of state-driven responses to the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) public health crisis, surfacing some of the ways these interventions posed problems for people who are homeless and experience intersecting health and socio-political disparities. From this vantage point, we then look critically at moves to frame homelessness as a public health crisis, as well as government efforts to prevent homelessness by drawing on public health rationalities. Although our focus is homelessness prevention, as constructed and pursued by governments, our analysis is inspired by critical public health scholarship that challenges the apparent impartiality of prevention as a central logic and set of practices in public health contexts. Trent University | Publication | 2024-04-25 | Naomi Nichols, Sarah Cullingham, Jayne Malenfant |
| A Review of Coordinated Access with Community-level ExpertsThe federally-mandated Coordinated Access (CA) model to help communities manage homelessness by prioritizing some people for scarce housing resources stands in tension with the federal ratification of the right to housing. Our research, conducted in Peterborough, Ontario, assessed service users’ and service providers’ experiences of CA, exploring its utility as a mechanism for helping municipalities realize the right to housing. Interviews with 48 people experiencing homelessness and 42 people working in the homeless-serving sector reveals specific shortcomings of the CA process, particularly within a climate of criminalization, stigmatization, and austerity. | Presentation | 2024-04-25 | "Mary Anne Martin" |
| Coordinated Access: A Grassroots Investigation of a Municipal Response to Homelessness in OntarioOne way to prevent and end homelessness is to ensure people understand how the homelessness system is intended to work, how it actually works, and whether it is leading to improved housing outcomes for everyone. In this presentation, we describe our use of grassroots lived experience research strategies to study the implementation of national and provincial policy priorities in our municipality. We believe lived expertise is central to the progressive realization of the right to housing. By producing accessible findings, our project demystifies the local homelessness system, allowing residents to monitor local efforts to realize the right to housing. | Presentation | 2024-04-25 | Samantha Blondeau, "Thamer Linklater" |
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