Over three days, we’ll bring together researchers, service providers, lived experts, advocates, and thought leaders from Canada and abroad to mobilize cutting-edge research on prevention and innovative developments in policy and practice. The conference will offer a unique opportunity to learn from research that showcases evidence-based solutions to youth homelessness.

This conference is presented by  and the  as the summation of their Making the Shift Networks of Centres of Excellence grant.

Visit the for full details

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The SCAN Act empowers the Yukon government to resolve complaints of alleged illicit activity at a property by serving an eviction notice with as little as five days warning, regardless of any existing tenancy agreements.

The legal challenge is centred on the idea that the SCAN Act violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantee of liberty and security. According to the lawyer bringing the challenge forward, Vincent Larochelle, the aim is to strike down the section of the act that allows landlords to terminate tenancy agreements by giving five days’ notice.

Stephen Gaetz, a 91��ɫ professor and president of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness who was called as an expert witness, outlined the circumstances that can cause someone to become unhoused, including evictions.

Gaetz noted that the further west and north you go in Canada, the higher the prevalence of unhoused Indigenous people. He also said that a point-in-time count in Whitehorse in 2018 showed 82 per cent of unhoused people in the city were Indigenous, with 73 per cent of these people identifying as First Nations.

91��ɫ Research Chair in Reparative and Racial Justice Carmela Murdocca told the court that complaints-based property ordinances such as the SCAN Act operate on the fringes of the criminal justice system and disproportionately affect “racialized, economically marginalized and Indigenous people.”

Read the full article on the Yukun News' .

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91��ɫ’s  (COH) will co-host an international symposium on youth transitions from child protection services that will bring together over 100 policymakers, researchers and service providers from across Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

From Oct. 12 to 13, the International Transitions from Child Protection Symposium in Richmond, B.C., will examine the challenges associated when youth “age out” of the child protection system and lose the supports they once received.

This transition often finds youth without appropriate housing, education, employment or emotional support, making them susceptible to homelessness and other adverse outcomes. A COH study called “”  found that 57.8 per cent of youth experiencing homelessness were involved with child protection services in the past. Furthermore, Indigenous children make up a disproportionately large percentage of children in care, with those experiencing homelessness  

The symposium, co-hosted with , will further consider the subject, as well as the gaps and challenges within the systems meant to protect and support vulnerable youth. Addressing the transition experience requires a comprehensive, multi-sector approach that spans  and various sectors, including social services, health care, policing and justice.

The event’s sessions will explore how to improve transitions by bringing together decision-makers, researchers, policymakers, service providers, and people with lived experience in child protection and youth homelessness. The goal is to identify promising practices and opportunities for action, ensuring successful transitions to adulthood, preventing youth homelessness and fostering positive life outcomes.

The symposium represents a first-of-its-kind opportunity for governments, communities and researchers to learn, grow and work together to co-design what partnerships, actions and shared responsibility can look like. It is sponsored by the Home Depot Canada Foundation and Porticus.

Those interested in attending can see the full  and . Those with questions are encouraged to contact David French at dfrench@awayhome.ca.

Article originally published in the October 4, 2023 issue of 

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 (MtS), a youth homelessness social innovation lab co-led by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness at 91��ɫ, is seeking proposals from researchers and community organizations (that can hold ) for one-time grants.

For full details, including French-language application materials, visit .

Research projects should contribute to MtS’s of policy and service enhancements that prevent youth homelessness in Canada. Youth homelessness prevention is defined in .

Applications must respond to one of the following funding streams and be submitted by the deadline date of Feb. 28 at 5 p.m. EST:

• Youth-Focused Harm Reduction
• Legal and Justice Issues
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Evictions Prevention
• Data and Technology: Understanding the Role of Linked Administrative Data in Preventing Youth Homelessness
• Pathways into Homelessness
• Open Prevention Topic

Who can apply?

Individuals or institutions can apply. Applicants must be affiliated with a Canadian post-secondary academic institution. Principal investigators must be tenure-stream faculty or adjunct faculty members.

Not-for-profit organizations can apply for funding, provided they meet Tri-Council requirements and submit the supporting documentation, including affiliation with an academic institution. Indigenous not-for-profit organizations wanting to administer the grant funds should apply for institutional eligibility.

Funding amount and duration

MtS will fund between $50,000 and $250,000 per project. Successful projects will receive funds approximately mid-August 2022. Projects should anticipate starting on Sept. 1, 2022. Project activities must be completed by Dec. 24, 2024.

How to apply

Step 1: Download the application guide to determine if your proposal is eligible, and to learn more about how to submit your proposal.

Step 2: Prepare your application and complete the Making the Shift budget template.

Step 3: and submit your application through the Making the Shift submission portal. 

Both English and French applications are encouraged. MtS application documents translated into French were posted on Feb. 2.

Do you have questions? Contact the Making the Shift funding team at mtsfunding@yorku.ca for questions regarding your proposal or the submission process.

Learn more about current funded MtS projects

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We are pleased to announce that the  has established the Toronto Centre of Excellence (TCE) on Youth Homelessness Prevention at 91��ɫ. More than three years in the making, we couldn’t be more honoured to represent Canada across the UNECE’s Member States.

Hosted by 91��ɫ and co-led by the ,  and our , the TCE presents an important opportunity to work internationally to contribute to the transformation of how we respond to and prevent youth homelessness.

The TCE is part of a broader network of Centres of Excellence under the coordination of the UNECE with a mandate to engage in the exchange of research knowledge, experience and best practices to support the implementation of the . Currently, there are Charter Centres in Estonia, Scotland, Albania, and Norway, with additional Charter Centres launching in Switzerland, Italy, and Spain.

Through engaged international research, the TCE provides opportunities to assess the state of youth homelessness and prevention in the UNECE’s 56 member states. It will also endeavour to get youth homelessness and homelessness prevention on government policy agendas, catalyzing change and improved well-being and housing outcomes for youth and their families. The TCE allows us to leverage the training resources we’ve been developing in Canada on prevention and sustained exits for adaptation in other jurisdictions. The TCE then becomes an international megaphone for the important work we’ve been leading through our Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab, including our Demonstration Projects on models of prevention and Housing First for Youth.

The importance of international engagement cannot be stressed enough. For both of us, the new ways of thinking about and responding to homelessness that we’ve seen in different countries have led to meaningful and paradigm-shifting understandings of what to do, when and why. Learning about the Geelong project and Youth Reconnect in Australia nearly ten years ago led us to reconsider the role of prevention. While prevention has NOT been a priority in North America (though that is changing in Canada), when modern mass homelessness emerged in Australia, their response was not to build more shelters for youth, but rather work to prevent homelessness from occurring in the first place through school-based early intervention. More recently, human rights-based homelessness legislation in Wales (2014) paved the way for a preventive approach that we refer to as “Duty to Assist”, whereby local authorities are required to take reasonable steps to prevent or end a person’s homelessness, and have recourse to a wide range of mechanisms of assistance. People who do not have their right to housing fulfilled can challenge this in court. This is what the future of homelessness prevention should look like.

Our international exchanges are also bi-directional. , a Canadian adaptation intended to design a Housing First intervention that meets the needs of developing adolescents and young adults, has gained traction in many countries in Europe, at a rate that is perhaps even faster than in Canada. Our international relations have paid big dividends, and we hope to open up opportunities for even more international engagement involving more partners from Canada and abroad.  

The sharing of knowledge internationally will be better enabled with the establishment of the Toronto Centre of Excellence. The Centre provides a container for such activities and mechanisms to catalyze our focus on prevention and youth homelessness internationally. The designation will enable us to leverage funds to expand the critically important opportunities for international engagement, co-production of research and other activities. This will enhance the quality and impact of the knowledge generated through Making the Shift in Canada and the entire UNECE region.

Over the coming months, we’ll be working to implement our first year’s work plan for the Charter Centre, including hosting a virtual conference on Housing First for Youth with UNECE Member States. We’ll also be exploring options for membership models for the Charter Centre. We want to thank 91��ɫ and the Faculty of Education for all of their support to realize the Toronto Centre of Excellence.

Article originally published on the on June 16, 2021.

Authors:
, Faculty of Education Professor and CEO & President, Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
, CEO and PresidentA Way Home Canada

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Welcome to the November 2020 issue of Innovatus, a special issue of YFile that is devoted to teaching and learning innovation at 91��ɫ.

This issue of Innovatus focuses on teaching, learning and the student experience in the Faculty of Education. I am so pleased by the rich variety of stories offered in this issue because they showcase the expansive depth of the Faculty's approach to the "act of education" to quote Interim Dean Sharon Murphy.

Education is universal and the Faculty's work with refugees in the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya, homeless youth and in re-envisioning early childhood education are displayed among the fine stories offered in this issue. As well, Dean Murphy's letter is a testament to the Faculty's commitment to excellence, and the story highlighting the innovation shown in moving the Faculty of Education's Summer Institute online and transforming it to a year-long effort is amazing. Encore!

Thank you again for the many wonderful comments about our September and October issues. I value each of your responses. Please continue to contact me with your ideas, classroom innovations and thoughts about teaching, learning and the student experience.

As I close, the snow is starting to fly and with it, the holidays are approaching. I would like to take a moment to wish each of you good health and happiness at home, which is especially important this year.

Featured in the November 2020 issue of Innovatus

In her letter to the community, Interim Dean Sharon Murphy writes about how the Faculty of Education is constantly working to enliven new visions of education and society, visions of possibility, equity and social justice. "Our work focuses not only inward on curriculum and pedagogy, but very much looks outward towards the idea of education being situated within a complex and seemingly evermore fragile world."

One of 91��ɫ's hallowed traditions, the Faculty of Education Summer Institute (FESI), may have bowed to COVID-19 in terms of format, but it is unbowed in terms of mission and content. For 2020-2021, the institute has morphed into a series of five free webinars titled Up Close and Personal: Conversations on Anti-Oppression.

Stephen Gaetz, the 91��ɫ Research Chair in Homelessness and Research Impact and a professor in the Faculty of Education, is using his excellent research and communications skills and grant-writing ability to attack the challenges within youth homelessness, which need broad solutions and a meeting of many perspectives.

Rachel Silver, an assistant professor of education at 91��ɫ, with the help of a team of her colleagues in both Toronto and Dadaab, has created a virtual colloquium series, Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis, for the Faculty's Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) program. The series considers the issues arising from the confluence of education, the COVID-19 pandemic and new waves of resistance to anti-Black racism.

Lucy Angus and Cristina Delgado Vintimilla, assistant professors new to 91��ɫ and the Faculty of Education, have created a lecture series titled Disrupting Early Childhood: Inheritance, Pedagogy, Curriculum to explore new ideas about early childhood education (ECE) and create a space to bring together the innovative research conversations that are changing the field of ECE.

Innovatus is produced by the Office of the Associate Vice-President Teaching & Learning in partnership with Communications & Public Affairs.

I extend a personal invitation to you to share your experiences in teaching, learning, internationalization and the student experience through the Innovatus story form, which is available at .

Will Gage
Associate Vice-President, Teaching & Learning

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