NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: housing; homelessness; governance; municipalities; social policy

Objective(s): To understand the governance of homelessness, including barriers to collaborative governance, in small, mid-sized, and northern communities in Canada. Research has started in small and mid-sized cities in BC, Ontario, and Quebec. This summer, research will be extended to a trip to Yellowknife to start to uncover governance dynamics in northern communities.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5976. This project aims to understand the governance of homelessness, including barriers to collaborative governance, in small, mid-sized, and northern communities in Canada. I have a SSHRC funded project to study this, and have started research in small and mid-sized cities in BC, Ontario, and Quebec. This summer, I would like to continue this research, including a trip to Yellowknife to start to uncover governance dynamics in northern communities. The outcome includes academic publications, but also extensive public facing work including the publication of policy briefs and reports that are accessible to and distributed to people working in the housing sector across Canada. It also includes knowledge dissemination back to people working in the housing system through workshops, conference presentations, public lectures, and media interviews. I also mobilize knowledge with policy-makers, including at the federal level, and hope to bring insights from communities of different sizes into this future work. In terms of a more specific aim, the housing system in Canada consistently fails to provide safe and adequate housing for everyone. The most extreme manifestation of the housing crisis is homelessness. Solutions to the crisis are more urgent than ever, as housing insecurity and unsheltered homelessness have risen at alarming rates across the country, in cities of all sizes (Pomeroy 2023). Research has demonstrated that increased investments and system reform are necessary to solve the crisis (Dej 2020; Gaetz 2010). Studies of complex social problems, including a small literature on homelessness, have also concluded that collaborative and inclusive governance is necessary for long-term solutions (Doberstein 2016; Smith 2022). The vast majority of the research on homelessness in Canada has been in large cities (Smith and Kopec 2023). The homelessness crisis, however, is as wide as it is deep, and the number of people experiencing homelessness in northern, suburban, small, and mid-sized communities is growing. Our knowledge of the homelessness crisis as well as effective policy solutions to it require attention to its growing realities and the governance dynamics that shape responses to it outside of big cities. This project, which builds on an existing pilot project, proposes to study the governance of homelessness in northern, suburban, small, and mid-sized communities across Canada, including in Yellowknife, NWT. With the understanding that governance matters for policy solutions and evolution, the question is asked: what shapes the governance of homelessness outside of big cities? What are the barriers to inclusive and collaborative governance? This first requires mapping governance dynamics, considering the distribution of power between the actors that are involved in governance and the nature of relations between them. It also requires identifying barriers to the development of collaborative and inclusive governance and searching for examples where communities overcome these barriers. Understanding governance dynamics, including best practices and ways of overcoming barriers to collaborative and inclusive governance will enrich our understanding of place-based social risks and social protection. This stands to make an important advancement of knowledge regarding the operation of the Canadian welfare state and how and why it protects (or fails to protect) vulnerable people who are unhoused. It will further deepen our understanding of the welfare state in Canada by centrally considering groups that have not historically been associated with social protection, allowing for a better understanding of gaps and efforts to mend those gaps in the social safety net. Further, this work stands to contribute to the policy work of decision-makers and service providers by identifying best practices from different types of spaces, information they are eager to learn from. Effective governance alone will not resolve the crisis, but given the complexity of this policy challenge, it is an essential part of the solution. To understand and theorize the role of different actors in policy-making in these communities, the project will draw on a mix of qualitative methods, including extensive archival and primary document review (e.g. government budgets and annual reports, third sector group annual budgets), interviews with actors involved in homelessness governance (based on the pilot project, targeting 5-10 interviews per city), and participant observation at national and international policy conferences. The project begins with an extensive primary document analysis, which serves to provide context to the study, to identify key actors that should be contacted for interviews, and allows for information to be triangulated when obtained during the interview process. Next, interview participants will be recruited by email, selecting people connected through a professional relationship with the researcher or people who have a high-profile role in homelessness policy and governance and then “snowball” for further interviews, asking people to identify other influential actors to speak with (Denzin and Lincoln 2005). Interviews will be in person where possible, semi-structured, and relational (Fujii 2018); each person will be asked the same initial questions, including about the nature of their work, who they work with, who they perceive to be powerful, and how they characterize their relationships, but will also be open so as to allow for individual and sector-specific questions as well. Interviews are anonymous; transcripts are kept in a secure, password protected folder; participants can withdraw at any time; and an honorarium of $40 per participant is offered as a gesture of appreciation for the time and expertise that research participants have contributed. Before visiting the community, key stakeholders will be contacted to inquire about arranging interviews. Key stakeholders include elected officials at the municipal and territorial level, as well as public servants working at those levels of government as well. The primary investigator will also get in touch with people who work at key service providers in the city to ask about their experiences developing policy and implementing solutions. Interviews with people now residing in other communities, but who have experience in the housing and homelessness sector in the north, have noted that policy-making is much more collaborative in northern communities than it is in bigger communities in the south. To the extent they are willing and available, therefore, leaders and housing workers at service providers in the city will be contacted as well. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: August 05 - August 09, 2024