Grant: Operating Grant: Population Health Intervention Research

Homelessness is an ongoing crisis in our society. Homelessness and the lack of adequate, affordable housing worsen pre-existing physical and mental health problems and contribute to the onset of new illnesses. Research on homelessness has tended to focus on interventions to house and improve the health of homeless individuals, while neglecting the effect of public policies on homeless and vulnerably housed populations. Homelessness Action Plans are sets of policies and programs at the municipal or provincial level that have the stated goal of ending or reducing homelessness. A number of Canadian cities have recently developed their own Homelessness Action Plans, which can be considered a type of "population health intervention." The objectives of this study are (1) to determine the degree to which Homelessness Action Plans in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Ottawa achieve success in the implementation of proposed policies and programs; (2) to identify the barriers and facilitators for success; (3) to examine changes in homelessness and affordable housing in the population over the period that the Homelessness Action Plans are put into place; and (4) to develop a conceptual model of the factors that determine whether a Homelessness Action Plan will be successful in improving outcomes at the population level. New knowledge from this study will help in the development and evaluation of Homelessness Action Plans in cities and provinces across Canada.