Header photo of Better Tent City is taken from the source article on The Record..
Geoffrey Nelson, co-lead of the Ontario Housing First Regional Community of Interest (OHFRN-CoI), has written an article entitled "Tent cities are a result of failed social policies", published on September 3, 2021 in the Waterloo Region Record.
It is the role of government, particularly the federal government and the provincial government, both to formulate and fund solutions to homelessness. In 2017, the federal government announced its $400 billion National Housing Strategy over 10 years. This strategy included a pledge to reduce chronic homelessness in 10 years and introduced a rent supplement (the Canadian Housing Benefit) for people living on low-income to help them afford to rent an apartment.
One has to look no further than Waterloo Region to see what a failure this policy has been. The Region’s Housing First program, PATHS2Home operated by Lutherwood, has seen no increase in rent supplements and no additions to the staffing capacity of the program.
Read more on The Record.
The Ontario Housing First Regional Network Community of Interest (OHFRN-COI) is intended to assist communities across Ontario to develop, evaluate, and improve Housing First (HF) programs based on the Pathways model tested, adapted, and shown to be effective in the At Home/Chez Soi Demonstration Project. This CoI is supported by Evidence Exchange Network (EENet), which is part of the Provincial System Support Program (PSSP) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.