After broad consultation with the community and partners, and a review of what’s working in other jurisdictions, Streetohome continues to explore opportunities to broker and leverage recovery pathways in Vancouver.
“No one knew the complexity of homelessness when we started,” says John McLernon, Streetohome Board Chair. “Conventional wisdom was that we have homeless people, we’ll build homes with supports for them and the world will be okay, but it was only when we started to really understand the issues that we realized that we had to focus upstream on the root causes.”
Streetohome is focusing its efforts on evidence-based initiatives that promote recovery from unemployment, isolation, mental health challenges, trauma, substance use and/or criminal histories. As it did with supportive housing, Streetohome is collaborating with experts and reaching out to the private sector to move the dial once again on homelessness.
The ‘Streetohome Stool’ represents individual needs that can be addressed for citizens in Vancouver with lived experience or at-risk of homelessness to ensure they thrive.
