Assessing emergency shelter patterns to inform solutions to homelessness

The mandate of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness is to end homelessness in the Capital Region by 2018. Significant progress has been made, 162 units of supportive and 129 units of affordable housing have been built since 2009, yet homelessness remains a significant problem in Victoria, BC (Pauly et al., 2013). There continues to be a constant number of people using the emergency shelters annually (approximately 1650 for the past three years) and the number of people waiting for social housing has remained high (Pauly et al., 2013). Thus, a better understanding of the needs of people using emergency shelters would provide key information to inform action that could contribute to stopping the flow into homelessness. The results from this research will provide the Coalition with a more nuanced understanding of individuals using emergency shelters in Greater Victoria. This result will provide the Coalition with clearer estimates of how much of what type of housing is still needed to solve homelessness in Greater Victoria.

 To develop a deeper understanding of shelter user groups in Greater Victoria’s emergency shelters through the development of typologies based on shelter use patterns.

 To identify the particular housing needs of each user group.

Faculty Supervisor:

Bernadette Pauly

Student:

Hannah Rabinovitch

Partner:

Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness

Discipline:

Social work

Sector:

Service industry

University: