Week 3 - Homelessness

Question 1

Define: homefullness

Answer 1

• isn’t just physical shelter or a roof over your head
• includes family, safety, security, comfort
• feeling you can go about your daily business knowing you always have support and stability no matter what happens, good or bad

Question 2

Characteristics of the ideal home: (Jerome Tognilli)

Answer 2

• centrality and rootedness; the central place of your existence
• continuity, unity, and order; unity and comfort in a non-ordered world
• privacy, security, refuge; secure retreat from the outside world
• self-identity; sense of control, house and home are directly connected to our concept of identity
• a context for social and familial relations; site of many of life’s most intense, intimate and personal interactions

Question 3

The homeless experience higher rates of:

Answer 3

1. Mental illness
2. Chronic health issues
3. Substance abuse
4. Malnutrition and related disorders
5. Asthma among children
6. FAS fetal alcohol syndrome

Question 4

Define: Shelter to Street Ratio

Answer 4

• for every 1 in a shelter on a given night, there are 2 more, either on the street, or staying temporarily with friends or family
• fairly accurate, but impossible to tell

Question 5

Which group is most likely to be homeless in Canada?

Answer 5

• men over 35
• 20-35% have mental illness
• 1/3 have alcohol or drug abuse problems

Question 6

Some Societal Causes of Homelessness:

Answer 6

• Poverty
• Chronic shortage of affordable housing due to gentrification and downloading of responsibility for housing to local municipalities
• Deinstitutionalization
• Family violence

Question 7

Solutions to Homelessness

Answer 7

• increase income assistance rates
• increase minimum wage
• improve delivery of services/programs, ex. emergency shelters
• preserve existing affordable rental housing and work to generate more

Question 8

Why is it hard to quantify the amount of people who are homeless?

Answer 8

• census counts rely on people having an address
• other counting measures have difficulties of reliability
• overestimating invites public cynicism
• underestimating incurs accusations from those whose funding relies on accurate numbers

Question 9

What are the 4 Types of Canadian Homeless according to the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH)?

Answer 9

1) Unsheltered; absolutely homeless and living on the streets or in places not intended for human habitation
- people living in public/private spaces w/o permission, or living in places not meant for habitation
2) Emergency Sheltered; includes those staying in overnight shelters for people who are homeless, as well as shelters for those impacted by family violence
- including people fleeing natural disaster
3) Provisionally Accommodated; those whose accommodation is temporary or lacks security of tenure
- people in institutional care who lack a home, living in short term rental housing
4) At Risk of Homelessness; people who are not homeless, but whose current economic and/or housing situation is precarious or does not meet public health or safety standards
- people with precarious employment, facing eviction, abusive situations, severe and persistent mental illness, active addictions, etc