The reaction to homelessness often translates into temporary emergency measures, such as the addition of beds in accommodation, transportation services or drop-in centers when severe cold weather is announced.
These necessary actions aim to prevent people in precarious situations from finding themselves on the street in times of great vulnerability. When there is a fire, it must be extinguished. But if we really want to get involved in preventing homelessness, with all the negative consequences associated with it, we have to do more. The time has come to broaden our approach to homelessness to encompass prevention, which involves putting in place a panoply of measures, from new legislation to new, highly targeted programs.
A heavy burden to bear
Some government bodies, whether we think of prisons, hospitals or the Department of Youth Protection, contribute to the increase in the number of homeless people, by not ensuring that all their patients and clients avoid homelessness upon discharge. They thus transfer a heavy burden to the community sector.
It is the same with the phenomenon of residential evictions. Insufficient legal protections for tenants and the absence of mechanisms to help tenants in financial or other crisis avoid eviction are other sources of homelessness. The rapid increase in rents, which stems from various factors, also contributes to the inability of many households to pay their rent. We must avoid at all costs that tenants evicted from their apartments end up on the street or in a shelter.
As members of the Quebec Collective for the Prevention of Homelessness (CQPI), our job is to better understand how to prevent homelessness, whether through legislative changes or the implementation of new programs. It is true that these changes and these new programs will entail a certain cost in the short term, but it is also true that by preventing people from falling into chronic homelessness, we will not only help preserve the health of these people (because homelessness is very bad for your health), but we will also generate significant savings in emergency shelters and other health, social and legal services.
Research is essential to put in place evidence-based policies and to guide public policy decisions.
In Quebec, the number of studies dealing with homelessness remains low. We often don’t know what determines the success of a homeless project or program. We would do well to look into this further.
A delay to catch up
Elsewhere, whether in the rest of Canada, the United States or Europe, experiences and research give us a glimpse of promising practices. In Wales and Finland, for example, pioneering legislative initiatives emphasizing the right to housing and early state intervention have had a significant impact on demand for homelessness emergency services. . We can learn from these examples. Although Quebec has implemented a National Homelessness Policy, we can continue to learn from the best practices implemented by other Canadian jurisdictions and others that focus more on prevention.
At the beginning of May, homelessness prevention was at the heart of a symposium bringing together researchers, community stakeholders and representatives of the various levels of government, in Montreal. On the theme “Prevention of homelessness: from research to policies”, this event was an opportunity to create a dialogue with the political authorities and to directly transmit the recommendations, both from the academic world and from the community.
Among the proposals put forward: that Quebec adopt a law on the prevention of homelessness, in which the government recognizes the role it has to play within its own authorities. Homelessness prevention should not be primarily driven by the community. We can and must do better collectively.