Making the Prevention of Homelessness a Priority: The Role of Social Innovation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12328
• Author: Stephen Gaetz
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Published date: 01 March 2020

Making the Prevention of Homelessness a

Priority: The Role of Social Innovation

By Stephen Gaetz

abStract. Mass homelessness emerged in Canada in the wake of

neoliberal policies that reduced government production of housing

and other supportive measures. Efforts to reduce homelessness have

occurred in three stages: 1) an emergency response in the 1990s

that consisted mostly of investment in shelters, soup kitchens, and

day programs, 2) the implementation of community plans to end

homelessness, combined with the adoption of Housing First as a

strategy that seeks to provide reliable shelter as a first step to anyone

without it, followed by other remedial services, and 3) the recent

development in Canada of early intervention strategies to prevent

homelessness from its inception. The second stage was highly

successful in dealing with the situation of chronically homeless

adults, and many communities have begun to see reductions in

homelessness. However effective, this approach does not break the

cycle by intercepting potentially homeless individuals in their youth,

which is when it begins for many people. Canada is at the beginning

stages of the move towards a stronger focus on prevention, aided

by a social innovation agenda to identify, design, test, and evaluate

preventive interventions to determine which ones will be most

strategically effective, setting the stage for implementation and going

to scale.

Introduction

The persistence of modern mass homelessness continues to present

a challenge in many countries. There are three basic things one can

do to address the issue. First, we can seek to prevent homelessness

by working upstream to target those most vulnerable to homelessness

by providing necessary supports through early intervention. Second,

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 79, No. 2 (March, 2020).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12328

© 2020 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc

*Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Canada. President of the Canadian

Observatory on Homelessness (Homeless Hub). Email: sgaetz@edu.yorku.ca

354 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

we can implement emergency services and supports to provide “tem-

porary” aid while people are experiencing homelessness. Third, we

can help people exit homelessness in a sustainable way through pro-

viding not only housing but, ideally, supports to stabilize their living

situation.

In Canada, the first phase of our response to modern mass home-

lessness focused mostly on the second option: providing temporary

shelter, day programs, and food. This approach continues to persist

as the dominant response in terms of funding, policy, and practice.

More recently—in the last 15years—there has been a shift towards

a focus on supporting sustainable exits from homelessness through

the implementation of evidence-based interventions such as Housing

First, often accompanied by coordinated community planning strat-

egies. Progress has been made, but implementation of these strate-

gies has been uneven across the country, and the number of people

experiencing homelessness has not declined sufficiently to suggest

that this emphasis—which mostly targets people who are chronically

homeless (and for the most part adults)—has been sufficient to drive

us towards actually ending homelessness.

What is missing in Canada and other countries is a more dedicated

effort to address the inflow into homelessness through prevention.

This article documents the journey towards prioritizing the prevention

of homelessness in Canada, including steps taken to provide defini-

tional clarity and to develop the knowledge and evidence base to

enable the implementation of effective prevention-focused policy and

practice. Through “Making the Shift—A Youth Homelessness Social

Innovation Lab,” the principles of social innovation are being applied

to develop and mobilize this knowledge to contribute to a systems

transformation in how homelessness is responded to in Canada, with

the ultimate goal not just to reduce the number of people who expe-

rience homelessness, but to produce better outcomes for people who

are precariously housed or are at risk of losing their housing.

Understanding the Roots of Modern Mass Homelessness in Canada

Canada has not always had a major homelessness problem. Hulchanski

et al. (2009) have argued that while there have long been people who