Juliet: What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet
It does not matter what you call something, it remains what it is. Calling a skunk a rose is not going to leave you smelling like a rose should you run into a skunk.
The fact that the BC government and Vancouver’s municipal government have redefined homeless to exclude people who have access to a year round shelter bed does not reduce the number of homeless in Vancouver; it simply hides the size of the problem preventing government from looking bad or being forced to take effective action to actually reduce the number of homeless. Thus child poverty becomes ‘infant cash flow problems.’
Governments also like to latch onto buzzwords that have cachet that suggests the government understands and has a handle on a problem.
Housing First has been demonstrated to be effective in reducing homelessness. In Canada a 5 year $110 million research/study financed by the federal government and done by The Mental health Commission of Canada was completed in 2014 and clearly showed Housing First is effective in reducing homelessness in Canada.
Housing First is the only approach to homelessness to have demonstrated, repeatedly, that it is effective in reducing homelessness. Recent studies of our traditional approaches have demonstrated they are ineffective; that the traditional approaches recycle people through the system time after time.
Housing First works and it is the only approach that does.
Which is probably why Abbotsford’s mayor, council, city hall, homeless advisory and the homeless task force all latched onto the buzzwords ‘housing first’.
That is why it is imperative to differentiate between actions/plans labelled as ‘housing first’ and actions/plans that are formulated and conform with the foundation, principles and elements which Housing First is built on.
Calling something housing first does not make it Housing First any more than calling a grizzly bear a bunny rabbit makes the grizzly bear cuddly, cute and nonlethal.
In order to be able to formulate and implement a Housing First Action Plan that will be effective, as opposed to just slapping the name housing first on your actions and continuing to embrace ineffectual actions and behaviours – as Abbotsford is currently doing – it is crucial you have a solid understanding of and commitment to the foundational building blocks of Housing First, the principles of Housing First, knowledge and understanding of the results of the research on Housing First and of the knowledge and understanding gained through experience.
The first step in reducing homelessness in Abbotsford is to construct a Housing First Action Plans.
A real Action Plan, not a piece of fluff labelled as an action plan such as the ‘action plan’ the homeless task force foisted upon the homeless and other citizens of Abbotsford.
Why an Action Plan and What is an Action plan?
An action plan is useful to clarify what resources are required for a strategy to succeed or to reach a specific goal. It is a document that lists a sequence of steps that must be taken, of activities that must be performed, in order for the strategy to succeed or the specific goal achieved.
An action plan has three major elements (1) Specific tasks: what will be done and by whom. (2) Time horizon: when will it be done? (3) Resource allocation: what specific resources or funds are required for specific activities..
The homeless task force ‘action plan’ contained none of the elements that are required to create an action plan. And the one action that the report contained, and that the city rushed to take, is against the principles involved in both creating an action plan and of Housing First. At least Housing First as it is constituted and effectively employed to reduce homelessness in the rest of the world – as opposed to Abbotsford created and [mis]labelled housing first.
Creating and then implementing and overseeing Housing First in five cities [Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver] across Canada. Overseeing the research and the interim and final reports for Housing First in those five cities and in aggregate. The creation of an online toolbox that provides a template and tools for creating a Housing First Action Plan for any community.
In the Breckenridge Zone, when we seek to create a Housing First plan that will be effective and achieve its goal of reducing homelessness and we are seeking to hire someone to get started, we hire the person who has the experience set out in the prior paragraph.
In Abbotsford the mayor, city council, city hall and their advisors hire a bureaucrat and then hire the bureaucrat a research assistant and ignore the existence of the Canadian government’s 5 year, $110 million research/study of Housing First and the experienced people involved in the research/study.