Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC)

Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC) Director, Prof Jim Dunn, has an Op-Ed in today’s Hamilton Spectator about a proposal from some mayors and the province to tear down encampments. See: Ontario mayors have a plan for homelessness that won’t work, but we know what will Their initiative will fail because they are trying to solve the wrong problem. https://lnkd.in/gJRVyw2z

The Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities announced today that CHEC Director, Prof. Jim Dunn, has been appointed to the first Canadian Infrastructure Council (CIC). The CIC is the expert advisory body that will be delivering Canada’s first National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA). The NIA will support Canada’s infrastructure planners and decision-makers by compiling data, evidence and analysis to support better investment decisions. See: https://lnkd.in/gTkyXc8d

Do you conduct research on homelessness or hope to in the future? For the past few months, the Salt Lake Valley Coalition to End Homelessness Lived Experience Team and University of Utah researchers Danielle Maude Littman, PhD, LCSW Jeff Rose have been working to develop a set of guidelines for conducting research on homelessness in Utah to meaningfully include lived experts in research processes. Join us to hear our suggestions, receive a copy of the guidelines, and hear about our process of developing them. RSVP: https://lnkd.in/gVW9ujf8

Although the language, culture and economies are different, Canada and Latin America face similar housing challenges, CHEC Director, and McMaster University professor, Jim Dunn says after attending the 3rd Regional Housing Forum. https://lnkd.in/gQCZvmXB

CHEC Director Jim Dunn and Executive Advisor Steve Pomeroy have returned from the Hamilton Community Foundation study tour of Montreal. Here are some learnings from that trip:

CHEC Director Jim Dunn and Executive Advisor Steve Pomeroy have returned from the Hamilton Community Foundation study tour of Montreal. Here are some learnings from that trip:

CHEC Director Dr. Jim Dunn and Exec Advisor Professor Steve Pomeroy were with the Hamilton Community Foundation in Montreal this week learning innovative approaches and best practices for creating, retaining and maintaining affordable housing.

It almost seems trite to revisit the concepts from the Lalonde Report, which encouraged upstream thinking about the determinants of health, when we so commonly pay lip service to those determinants, but then recommend downstream interventions. What we need is more attention to cross-sectoral structural determinants of health. It's regrettable that this bears repeating. Again and again. To use housing, homelessness and health as an example: that homelessness still needs to be considered a health care issue (a view that has been prominent off and on for 30 years) is an embarrassment and a system failure. Homelessness is a housing system failure: every homeless person was once a housed person in distress whom the housing system failed. Health care gets involved because it is the only system that can't refuse to help people and therefore bears the impact of housing system failure. But health care only does so reactively when people are in extreme distress (that's what the health care system is designed for), making for costly remediation, as opposed to prevention. The scale of the problem requires action in the housing sector. Health care isn't well-suited to deliver the scale of housing required to address the magnitude of the problem. For every person whom they get from the ER to supported housing, at least one more is 'produced' by housing system failure. The efforts of health care providers to become housing providers is laudable, but it diverts our attention to the true upstream causes of the problem and asks a system to shoulder a responsibility that is unsuited to do so at the scale necessary and at the point in the causal chain necessary.

Really enjoyed the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC) day one of the Summer Institute. Very informative sessions in the morning on inclusion and housing as a human right. The afternoon contained a walking tour to see private housing developments in Edmonton. I had debated going on the tour since I live in Edmonton, but after going I recommend doing any kind of tour like this in your own city. It was informative and interesting, with lots of great conversations along the way.