Sudbury researcher part of project that wants to end homelessness in Canada

A Sudbury researcher is part of a national study with an ambitious goal of ending homelessness in Canada.

Kevin Fitzmaurice, director of Laurentian University's Centre for Social Justice and Policy, said he and his team are interviewing 120 youth, between ages 13 and 30, in the northeast who have experienced homelessness.

The interviews are part of a three-year research project called Making the Shift.

Fitzmaurice, who is also a reconciliation co-ordinator at the northern Ontario university and a longstanding board member with the Native People of Sudbury Development Corporation, said they are about one year into the study.

He said little research has focused on homeless youth, and what data is available centres on crisis response, rather than preventing homelessness.

"It's very, very important to acknowledge that youth are particularly vulnerable to homelessness and particularly when they're leaving institutional care, whether it's foster care or youth detention services," Fitzmaurice said.

He said Indigenous youth are particularly vulnerable and are eight times more likely to experience homelessness than non-Indigenous youth.

Indigenous youth make up 40 per cent of the study's respondents in Sudbury, Timmins and Cochrane. 

"It's very important to understand the colonial context in terms of not only the legacy of the Indigenous residential schools, which I think increasingly people are starting to understand and appreciate, but also the continued impacts of the Indian Act and the ongoing appropriation and occupation of Indigenous lands," Fitzmaurice said.

Fitzmaurice said one finding that's emerged from the research so far is that youth experiencing homelessness have diverse needs.

"We're starting to see that many of our youth have either a physical or learning disability, which is made worse by the hardships of homelessness and and their experience with a complex array of ever changing services, which they understand as Band-Aid solutions at best."

He added that a lack of access to affordable housing poses a major barrier for young people experiencing homelessness.

"The basic math out there right now is that the social supports that are available do not come close to market rents or general costs of living and meeting basic needs," Fitzmaurice said. "And we very much are in a housing crisis."

A person on the Ontario Disability Support Program can receive up to $1,169 a month, unless they qualify for special allowances that can increase that amount by a few hundred dollars.

Tent encampments

For a 10-month period, the City of Greater Sudbury had a tent encampment in Memorial Park in the downtown core.

The city evicted people from the park in April, but was able to connect a large number of them with housing services.

On Oct. 18, 2021, the city counted 88 people living in the tent encampment.

By March, the city confirmed 76 individuals in the park in October either found housing services or moved to city shelter spaces.

"All of these systems of housing supports and housing opportunities are working together collaboratively on a weekly basis, meeting through the co-ordinated access system, and accepting referrals from the by-name list," Raymond Landry, co-ordinator of the city's Homelessness Network, told CBC News in May.

 "We know week to week among all partners who is prioritized for services, where they're being referred to and why. Then offers are made to those in need."

However, Fitzmaurice and his Laurentian colleague, Carol Kauppi, resigned from the city's encampment response table earlier this year.

They told city council during a meeting about the encampment that they were opposed to its forced closure.