Lessons from Ottawa’s CAEH24 Ending Homelessness Conference

Charity Intelligence reports on 94 charities that address homelessness. We mainly focus on the largest charities that are concentrated in Canada’s large urban centres. The 2024 National Conference on Ending Homelessness – Canada’s largest two-day conference with over 2,000 attendants – was an opportunity for politicians to outline their policy approaches. It feels like easy talk about one of Canada’s most critical issues. Will more funding and more affordable housing end homelessness? Evidence and results from Canada’s frontline 518 emergency shelters would benefit all funders and decision makers.

We learned a lot from smaller municipalities: Kevin Webb – a member of the Canadian Shelter and Transformation Network – moderated an insightful Q&A session filled with smaller shelter representatives from Timmins, Medicine Hat, and other smaller towns. Conflict management strategies were a major discussion point. Specifically, managing residents who verbally or physically harm staff or fellow residents. These charities in smaller communities often lack specialized care resources for those suffering from addiction and psychotic episodes. These shelters face tough choices: tolerate harmful behaviour at the expense of the community or kick out the resident with no outflow plan. Surely there is a better approach.

Shelter leaders had different approaches. Some removed common conflict sources like breakfast lines (conflict is more likely when hungry and impatient residents jockey for a spot closer to the morning coffee). By removing lines and bringing food directly to residents, it removed a direct source of conflict. Others transferred clients to larger, more specialized care centres in larger cities. And others designed damage-resistant infrastructure like reinforced walls and doors.

Not all conversations were on successes. We had a conversation with Jaime Rogers – manager of Medicine Hat’s Community Housing Society – and learned that 20% of people do not benefit from Housing First’s policy of unconditionally housing those in need as quickly as possible. This is surprising considering previous research which reported an 88% success rate. We learned that this remaining 20% require extraordinary and specialized care; housing is not enough. Many seemed hesitant to openly discuss this important insight, with much of the discussion instead focusing on the 80% success rate.

Another session, focused on youth homelessness, covered different outflow strategies – when people leave a shelter, what happens next? When done poorly, youths lose the connections, structure, and support needed to navigate their futures. One shelter – Guelph’s Wyndham House – dominated the discussion. It offers rent support and maintains contact with former shelter residents months after departure. When needed, it refers former clients to specialized support such as the Homewood Health Centre, a local addiction recovery centre.

This is only a small snapshot of all we learned. We look forward to learning more and sharing more insights on our work in future articles.

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Want to learn more? See Charity Intelligence’s top 100 charities list here. You can read about Charity Intelligence's ranking methodology here.

Sources:

Shelter Capacity Report 2022, Statistics Canada, 2022

The Case for Housing First, National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2021