For more than 15 years, the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH) has conducted evidence-based, nonpartisan research designed to generate the impact and solutions necessary to end homelessness across the country.
By: Corey Allen
Led by York University’s Stephen Gaetz, a professor in the Faculty of Education, COH is based out of York and is the largest homelessness-dedicated research institute in Canada, and one of the largest in the world.
COH estimates around 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness each year, and roughly 35,000 people experience homelessness on any given night.
Gaetz’s research motivation to study homelessness stems from time spent away from academia. After completing his master’s and PhD at York, Gaetz worked for several years at community health organizations and for the City of Toronto, before returning to the University to become a faculty member.
“I’m so glad I had that break because it changed everything for me,” he says. “Working in the youth homelessness sector and learning about program planning, staff supervision, budgets, and leadership, it was like doing a different kind of PhD.”
Gaetz says it was a challenging time in the 1990’s to work in the sector because research on the issue of homelessness was undervalued.
“At the time, we had the dueling crises of modern mass homelessness and HIV/AIDs, and on that latter issue, research did matter. It was regarded as incredibly important for prevention, intervention, and solutions,” he says. “But research on homelessness was not seen in the same way and people said we didn’t need it. They were wrong.”
According to Gaetz, one of the biggest misunderstandings about homelessness is not realizing how relatively new of a social phenomenon it really is.
“Modern mass homelessness emerged in the late 80’s and early 1990’s due to policy changes where we stopped building social housing in Canada,” he says. “Governments expected the private sector to leap in, but that never happened. It’s a failed experiment, and so the number of people who become homeless in this country keeps growing, with 2022 data showing a 20 per cent increase.”
For Gaetz, the biggest problem to solving modern mass homelessness is the lack of prevention.
“Sadly, the bulk of our investment and activity in Canada over the last 30 years has been focused on temporary shelters, day programs and use of law enforcement, and a major consequence of this approach has been a continuous growth in the number of people who become mired in the situation and become chronically homeless,” he says. “A better option is to focus our efforts on helping people not become homeless in the first place, and if they do, to help them exit the situation as quickly as possible with access to housing and supports. We created this crisis, and we don’t offer people much more than emergency shelters and a baloney sandwich, if that.”
To help stop the crisis, Gaetz says more dedicated funding should be directed towards supporting communities do prevention work, pointing to a successful model from the United Kingdom.
“In 2014, Wales introduced a piece of legislation that basically created a duty to assist,” he says. “It meant that the local authorities, once they are aware someone is at risk of homelessness, are obligated to offer assistance to anyone facing eviction and at risk of becoming homeless. If the person agreed to the help, their homelessness had to be resolved within two months. The country’s homelessness numbers declined dramatically after this housing act was introduced.”
Another prevention strategy Gaetz advocates is for governments to prioritize and increase supports that address the issues that initially lead to youth homelessness, primarily family conflict, which is often the beginning of prolonged housing insecurity.
Federal data reveals fifty per cent of people who are homeless in Canada report having had their first experience with homelessness before the age of 25. Among youth, 40 per cent have their first homelessness experience before the age of 16.
“We need to do more than wait for an emergency and act before people become homeless, traumatized and sick,” says Gaetz. “Preventing youth homelessness with proper supports would yield better outcomes for young people, their families and communities, and lead to a reduction in chronic homelessness. It would be one of the most significant impacts we could have in the long run.”
One of the latest research endeavours for Gaetz and COH is a multi-partner collaboration over the course of seven years (2022-2029), funded by the Social Sciences of Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Led by Gaetz, the research is supported by a nearly $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant and involves 40 other academics, 25 collaborators and 29 partner organizations to work together on projects that focus on eviction prevention and shelter diversion, training for service providers and strengthening community responses.
Ultimately, Gaetz and his research team aim to create enduring positive change, and to mobilize their collaborative efforts to get closer to mission accomplished: influencing policy and preventing and ending modern mass homelessness in Canada, and beyond.
“That’s always been the work: achieve impact,” he says. “Let’s do research that’s going to be helpful. And never give up.”
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