Waterloo Region recognized for its coordinated approach to addressing homelessness
Waterloo Region – Waterloo Region is being recognized for the coordinated way that people who are homeless are supported into permanent housing.
“We’re trying to support people earlier on, as they enter our system, instead of having a longer experience of homelessness and the trauma associated with that,” says the Region’s Housing Services Director, Ryan Pettipiere.
Waterloo Region recently became the third community (and first large community) in Canada to achieve Basic Quality Coordinated Access. Coordinated access is a way for communities to design, streamline, and bring consistency to the process for how people who are homeless access housing and services. This status is awarded by Built for Zero Canada, a national change effort to help communities end chronic homelessness.
The approach of the Region and its partner agencies involves:
- Gathering data on homelessness in order to intervene early and prevent chronic homelessness. Chronic homelessness is when someone is homeless for six months in the past year or for 18 months in the past three years;
- More effectively prioritizing people for housing by using a standard assessment that determines the immediate needs of the person; and
- Referring people to housing that is the best fit for them, rather than offering a unit to the next person on the list. This leads to longer tenancies.
The community is already starting to see success in this approach. Earlier this year, the data on the number of people staying in emergency shelter showed many were aging into chronic homelessness. Seeing this trend enabled a targeted approach to supporting people into stable housing.
“The work we are doing has had a positive impact and our experience will hopefully help other communities across Canada as they start putting these processes in place,” said Pettipiere.
The federal government has made coordinated access mandatory for all communities in Canada by 2022.
-30-
For an interview, please contact:
Sherry Morley, Communications Coordinator, Community Services, Region of Waterloo