Housing NWT and the City of Yellowknife hosted a workshop April 22-23 to improve services for people experiencing homelessness.
The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) provided guidance for staff of front-line organizations working with vulnerable populations.
The focus was on housing and recovery-focused thinking, which aims to equip staff with the knowledge and tools necessary to adopt a perspective that aids in enhancing the quality of life for individuals and advancing their unique journey of recovery.
Housing NWT has received $600,000 from the federal government to complete a territory-wide count and data collection of homelessness, as well as to develop training to address homelessness issues. The workshop, held at Northern United Place, attracted 23 attendees, including shelter workers, case managers and territorial government staff from Yellowknife and Behchoko. They told of their work and living experiences, and shared suggestions on how to improve their practices.
In addition, participants discussed how they can support under-housed individuals, and how they can build relationships with vulnerable populations and community partners.
The territorial government department has planned another three workshops with CAEH in the city. These include a five-day certificate program to address trauma and grief in Indigenous communities and organizations from May 6-10, a session on self-care and other care for trauma-informed practices from May 13-14, and a workshop on creating trauma-informed spaces on May 15.
“I think that people are homeless because of a variety of issues that are all rooted in misunderstanding about what homelessness is,” said Jody Yurkowsky Pace, a national training consultant with CAEH.
She believes that people need to think in a way that not only sees the problem as an individual issue but also takes a broader view, such as the need to change policies that address poverty and a variety of individual and personal issues, as well as structural and societal issues that affect people and require a just approach.
She explained that homelessness is not only about losing a place to live, but also, from an Indigenous standpoint, about the loss of culture, language and displacement from land. To address this, she said it will require collaboration in a reconciliatory way, by understanding the roots of colonization and the impacts of inter-generational trauma.
“Things happen at the speed of trust. If we are not making steps toward truth and reconciliation, we are not making steps toward change,” said Yurkowsky Pace. She believes that the problems prevalent across the country are rooted in how to regain trust and rebuild relationships.
Homelessness can happen to anyone, she said. Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the downward economy has made even those with a place to live feel unsafe due to factors such as rising mortgage rates and recessions. This situation has worsened year by year she said.
Commenting on the federal government’s latest $8.4-million housing announcement for Yellowknife, which was made on the same day this workshop started, she said, “We need more housing. There needs to be a spectrum of housing across the country. Affordable housing isn’t affordable for everyone, and we need to look for solutions for everybody.”
This means that all levels of government and non-governmental organizations need to determine what affordability really is, she said.