Nuevos postulados con arraigo en la tradición

Once housed, new tenants may require a period of up to three years to feel fully stabilized. The Alex (Calgary), Mainstay Housing (Toronto), At-Home (Winnipeg Site), The Working Centre (Kitchener), Boyle Street Housing (Edmonton), Atira Women’s Resource Society (Vancouver), and The Bridges (Cambridge) concurred with this time-frame. As well, several organizations consider a two-year time-frames to stability and include BC Housing, Homeward Trust (Edmonton), Community Well-ness Initiative (Winnipeg), Ottawa Alliance to End HomelessWell-ness, and Lincoln Housing (Kitchener).

Broadly speaking, differences were dependent on how ‘stability’ was defined; the difference among individuals being housed; and the types of programs (programs helping people with high-needs may need more time). Homeward Trust contends that time-frame are dependent on the level of client needs, so having a good assessment protocol is essential. Furthermore, they note that matching an assessment with a variety of options for people with higher needs is important, as is allowing for a lower-needs

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‘Stability’ was defined in a variety of ways. The Alex (Calgary) describes this as a new tenant making a positive self-image shift from “I’m a homeless person” to “I’m a housed person and a member of community.” The Alex also noted that the cumulative small changes seen in people as they stabilize and the pride of seeing their tenants integrate seamlessly into the community as positive outcomes.

Mainstay Housing (Toronto) estimated that it can take “sixteen months to two years just to under-stand what it means to be a tenant and to own that and be comfortable and see their home as their permanent home and see themselves as having some control over whether they keep this housing or lose the housing.” For The Bridges (Cambridge), new tenants developing the “ability and notion to look for help, which would not have happened before the two-year period”; and The Working Centre (Waterloo) expanded suggesting that, “By the third year, it seems to just be rounding out.

The person moves into a level of stability, of doing it on their own” a settlement echoed by At Home/Chez Soi Winnipeg.

Atira Women’s Resource Society noted that by three years, they begin to see a marked difference in tenants’ substance use and physical well-being. BC Housing closely associated any timeframe with

acuity of mental health or addiction challenges. As previously indicated, BC Housing uses ‘6-months housed’ as their performance measure for stable tenancies.

Two other important viewpoints were expressed regarding time-frames of stability. Atira Women’s Resource Society commented on stability at the building scale. When Atira tenants a new build-ing, they expect to “have a year of chaos” with people moving in and out, and people choosing other programs or buildings. With time, Atira begins to “see a building start to settle down in about a year and then really develop a community and a culture of community in two to three years, and...you can probably extrapolate that to individual tenants.”

Lastly, The Argus Residence for Young People provided a broader context comparing the pathways taken by youth who are homeless, to “typical Canadian youth from stable homes”. The Argus argued that an average Canadian youth aged 19-30, may spend years moving back and forth between their parents’ home, living with friends, attending higher education, and working; all the while learning the life-skills needed for living independently. They argue that parents act as transitional shelters for their young-adult children, providing high levels of support for years; an advantage unavail-able to youth with complex needs who are homeless. For the Argus, discussions of timeframes for youth must be placed in juxtaposition to the advantages available to these “average Canadian youth”.

Mainstay Housing made a similar argument, “Most people when they move away from parents have had decades of skill building, mentoring and ongoing support. Not so for this group, which also has other complex challenges.”

6.3 Graduation

The vast majority of organizations consulted have no expectation that a tenant will leave or “grad-uate” the program. As BC Housing explained, “For the most part, people are homeless for a reason, whether it’s addiction or mental health issues, or extreme poverty. For supported housing, once a person who has persistent multiple barriers, or a person with a disability gets into supported hous-ing they generally don’t move until they have to go to a health facility with a higher level of care.”

Most organizations suggested that supports for a person who is at high risk of homelessness would need to continue for life, though usually the level of supports required will decline with time.

It is important to note that a few organizations do ‘graduate’ tenants or more likely, transition a tenant to another program along a spectrum of services. This includes Homeward Trust (Edmon-ton) that has begun to look at long-term tenants and appropriate ways to assess and transition people who no longer need high levels of supports. Questions around managing transition have also been discussed at the Winnipeg Site of At Home/Chez Soi. The Alex (Calgary) is permanent hous-ing, but has seen a few people graduate, “a couple transferred to different programs, a couple went home, three, or four graduated to full independence”.

Boyle Street Housing, which does graduate tenants, brought an additional concern to bear. For a person ready to exit their program, a common experience is to panic at the perceived change. Boyle Street advo-cates when transitioning a person to different support levels, for a process of four to six months working with the tenant to manage the change. The challenge is finding the resources to undertake the process.

Overall, this section confirmed that finding and maintaining housing, along with the related sup-ports in highly individualized. However, what become clear is that starting out by creating and rein-forcing positive and long-term relationships can go a long way toward building the necessary trust that is so important in working toward recovery. As well, this relationship building phase can help ease the transition into long term stable housing which was observed as taking upwards of three years. Ultimately, each person’s journey down the pathway of successful housing can be understood through several incremental steps. This starts with a pre-housing stage that might include working on building relationships and trust; then moving more into a period when a person becomes com-fortable in their housing to final stages in which a person is integrated into the broader community.

A final step implies the potential of “graduating” or perhaps needing fewer supports and services.

Each of these steps can take a varying amount of time but all seem to play a key role in persons be more apt to remain successfully housed.