Journey Out of Homelessness

By: Brandon Kelm

Access to housing — ensuring everyone has the safety, security and autonomy of a home of their own — is about equity in opportunity, choice and rights.

If you require help, please contact our Coordinated Access Team, details HERE.

What does it mean to help someone experiencing homelessness find a home? How do they begin that journey? How long does it take? What is a Housing Outreach Worker (HOW) and how do they help facilitate this journey out of homelessness?

This three-part series will take a closer look at the process of empowering an individual to transition out of homelessness and into a home: 

  1. What happens after someone has reached out for help? 
  2. What is involved in finding them a home? 
  3. What does a move-in day look like for someone leaving homelessness behind?

Access to housing – ensuring everyone has the safety, security and autonomy of a home of their own – is about equity in opportunity, choice and rights. For someone experiencing homelessness, the process of finding a home often means implementing significant changes in order to move forward on that path to safety, security and autonomy. 

Sometimes, with strategic intervention and support, the risk or experience of homelessness can be mitigated or brief. However, being without a home can also become a chronic or complicated situation and the journey out of homelessness then involves overcoming numerous barriers.

A HOW works as a guide and source of support to help someone experiencing homelessness navigate through the Housing Support process. They also act as a coach and cheerleader, reminding those they work with of their inherent value and capacity for change, while empowering them to move forward and to keep taking that next step. 

Housing Outreach Worker (HOW) searching for a Housing First participant
Path to an encampment where a Housing First participant was living.

Part One: Outreach – connecting with those experiencing homelessness

Imagine … 

… waking up in a tent in the river valley in January

… being ushered out of a shelter with all of your belongings at the crack of dawn

… recovering in a hospital with nowhere to go once you are discharged

… trying to escape an abusive relationship with your children

A person’s priorities in situations like that tend to be narrowly and understandably focused on survival – How will they stay warm? Where will they find food? Where will they sleep tonight? 

When someone doesn’t have a home, how do they initiate and navigate the process of finding one? 

After the first initial step of reaching out to Coordinated Access for help, the process of finding housing can seem like an insurmountable series of hurdles for someone experiencing homelessness. Securing a home usually requires having a current address, income, ID, contact number, reference, etc. Consider how overwhelming that process must feel to someone who isn’t in possession of or doesn’t have access to any of those things. Where does someone in that situation even begin to make such a drastic change, and how can they sustain that change once they’ve made it?

This is where a Housing Outreach Worker (HOW) comes in. Successfully housing someone experiencing chronic homelessness, or someone in a complex situation, begins with outreach. It can be a time-consuming task, one that is an active partnership between that individual and a HOW. 

For a HOW this means going out to locate and meet with a Housing Support participant where they are, wherever that may be. It means going to their camp in the river valley at 6:30 a.m. in -30 degree weather and driving them to various appointments. It means finding them in one of several day access centres when they haven’t been able to charge their phone or access wifi to check their messages or email. It means bringing the process to them, removing the barriers that could impede or derail their progress. A HOW’s work and workspace have to be mobile and adaptive – a backpack and a laptop, their vehicle, an empty table at a day access space, etc.

A HOW’s toolkit and mobile office.
Welcoming artwork at Boyle McCauley Health Centre, a space HOWs can meet with Housing First participants.

A HOW (with the collaboration of community outreach teams) will make multiple trips to wherever the participant is located and assist them in getting to multiple appointments to:

  • secure monthly income
  • apply for government issued ID
  • go to apartment viewings and complete rental applications
  • set up utility accounts and schedule hook-ups (power, internet, etc.)
  • pick out some basic furniture for their new home at Find

For someone experiencing homelessness this means placing a significant amount of trust in their HOW and the Housing Support process. They are making a choice to shift their focus from simply surviving to putting in the considerable effort it takes to make massive changes. They are choosing to have faith that all of the extra effort and the time they put into this process will ultimately be worth it.

Read Part Two: Finding Someone a Home

Read Part Three: Move-In Day

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LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We recognize we are gathered, in collaboration and with joint purpose, on Treaty 6 territory. This territory is the home and gathering place for diverse Indigenous peoples. The Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Inuit, and many others. We know the importance of the Treaty and our responsibility to these communities and that only in partnership can we create the social change necessary to end homelessness. It is vital that we meaningfully engage and partner with Indigenous people and communities in this work. It is important to recognize and address the conditions brought forth by colonialism. Displacement from traditional homelands, systemic racism, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, and the ongoing overrepresentation of Indigenous people in child welfare, correctional systems, and homelessness are responsibilities we all share.