A woman holds a photo of her best friend, who died of a drug overdose in January 2017, before a march to draw attention to the opioid overdose epidemic, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, B.C.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck)
Catastrophic increases in opioid overdose deaths across Canada require a broad response – tackling housing, food and income insecurity as well as the contaminated drug supply.
The leader of Windsor council wants the streets cleared of homeless people ahead of the royal wedding – saying some people are choosing to sleep rough.
In Los Angeles, the architecture firm KTGY is repurposing shipping containers to build a transitional apartment complex for the homeless.
KTGY
Three innovative projects set to be completed this year are geared toward strengthening communities that have been left out of the economic recovery.
In 2016, James Edwards, right, poses with fellow residents at the Plymouth Crossroads youth homeless residence in Lancaster, N.Y., as he prepares to leave for college. Edwards finished high school while homeless.
AP/Carolyn Thompson
Roughly 700,000 students ages 13 to 17 have experienced homelessness in the last year. An education researcher says the obstacles that these students face can threaten their college dreams.
Research shows social enterprises employ more people with disabilities, female managers and long-term unemployed than regular businesses. This will be key to a more inclusive economy.
A homeless man sleeping rough in the city. More and more older people will be homeless on current trends.
flickr
The rising number of older Australians is exposing the shortage of housing options and services to meet their needs, putting them at increasing risk of homelessness.
The Ballarat Road project in Maidstone and Footscray, Melbourne, will transform vacant land into housing for people at risk of homelessness.
Schored Architects
An innovative collaboration between government, a non-profit group and philanthropists has found a way to provide urgently needed housing on land that would otherwise be left vacant for years.
If the government expanded the new $73 million Student Work-Integrated Learning program to all students it could help tackle Canada’s most intractable social problems — such as homelessness, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, affordable housing, social cohesion and intercultural understanding.
A new government program will create 10,000 work placements for undergraduates in only business and STEM subjects. Why not fund students to innovate in the social sector too?
The ageing population is one factor in increasing numbers of people living alone, and innovative and inclusive responses are needed.
shutterstock
Living and dying alone presents many challenges for cities, and we’ll need more than technology to meet these. Only an inclusive, innovative response can deliver the essential element of human care.
Vital Signs takes stock of all the key elements of a city’s successes and challenges, and the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation uses this data to guide its grant-making.
Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation
A decade after Toronto produced the first Vitals Signs report, community foundations in Melbourne and other cities are using these reports’ up-to-date data to inform their decisions.
“Looking for one girl to share a master room with another 3 girls.”
Screenshot from Gumtree ad, August 19 2017, 11:58
City living costs are driving people to organise themselves to share a room with strangers. These precarious living arrangements hardly qualify as a home.
Homeless residents of El Bronx embrace after a May 2016 raid that displaced thousands, sending some to shelters and others to streets elsewhere in the city.
Fernando Vergara/AP
Bogota’s mayor wants to make the city ‘better for all,’ but repeated police crackdowns have displaced thousands of homeless Colombians. Are clean streets really more important than human rights?
Big Issue sellers get social contact and dignity out of their work, but it’s not a secure pathway out of poverty and homelessness.
Joe Castro/AAP
Big Issue sellers get social contact and dignity out of their work, but it’s not a secure pathway out of poverty and homelessness. Social enterprises enable small steps; governments can do much more.
When this is home, bad weather can make a bad situation much worse.
Karen McIntyre
Extreme weather is hard enough for those with a home. But imagine losing everything you own in a storm - that’s the experience of many homeless people forced to live out in the open during wild weather.
The homeless camp in Martin Place, Sydney, is an uncomfortable reminder of a deeper systemic crisis.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Americans, an independent group, tend to believe that people can “pull themselves up by their boot straps.” Yet bigger forces are at play in a person’s ability to gain education, a good job and money.