After paying first and last month’s rent, people rarely have any funds left for transportation, food, a bed or pots and pans to cook with. Combined with pre-existing health issues and systemic barriers, keeping housing can feel out of reach for many.
To ensure very vulnerable people exiting homelessness succeed in keeping their new found housing, Blue Door offers ongoing support through two programs called Housing Retention and Housing To Health.
Housing To Health is a collaborative Housing First program involving Blue Door, the Krasman Centre, and LOFT Community Services. Its primary objective is to help people experiencing chronic homelessness find and maintain housing. The program is led by Peer Workers, Housing Stability Coordinators, and Housing Locators, who meet individuals ‘where they are’ and provide a wide range of flexible, non-judgmental, and stigma-alleviating approaches and support related to health, finance, and independent living.
Housing Retention is provided to youth, adults, and families when they are leaving emergency housing, aiming to prevent reentry into homelessness by helping them overcome challenges and maintain their housing. The support services of Housing Retention encompass connections to furniture banks, healthcare, and food banks, alongside landlord advocacy, employment search assistance, and support with education applications.
Approximately 80% of individuals who experience homelessness will only face homelessness once in their lifetime.
For 20% of people, life challenges and systemic inequities result in episodic or chronic homelessness.
Episodic homelessness refers to individuals, who are currently facing homelessness and have experienced three or more episodes of homelessness in the past year.
Chronic homelessness refers to individuals, who are currently experiencing homelessness and have been without a place to call home for six months or more in the past year.
Delivered by a Peer Worker, peer support involves building an authentic, trust-based relationship rooted in the sharing of similar lived experiences. This form of support enhances mental health and yields results comparable to traditional therapy, as it provides individuals with the opportunity to be heard and understood. When a person arrives with nothing, feeling they have lost everything and are all alone, unloved, and hopeless, the Peer Worker becomes their temporary support network, their guiding star.
To address compounding and intersecting challenges, Housing To Health provides a wide range of supports to meet vulnerable people where they are at.
Supports include:
Housing To Health uses a Housing First approach, a best practice in Canada and throughout the world, that provides immediate access to independent housing for people experiencing homelessness. At the same time, Housing To Health provides wraparound supports to help promote successful housing retention and overall wellbeing.
The Housing First approach centres around the proven idea that people are better able to move forward when housed first.
Housing First has been shown to increase housing stability and improve the quality of folks’ lives and health.
Lifting people out of homelessness and poverty, your gift will provide employment training propelling people into well-paying careers in the trades, a bed for the night, a warm meal, psychotherapy, onsite basic healthcare, longer stays to overcome trauma and barriers, and much much more.
