Our Approach
For over a decade, CAEH has worked directly with communities to prevent and reduce homelessness; built local skills and capacity; and led a national movement advocating for the housing, funding, and policy that enable local change.
Ending homelessness at the local level requires shifting from managing homelessness to ending it, from emergency responses to permanent and sustainable solutions. Homelessness is a dynamic problem that’s constantly changing, so it requires a dynamic solution. CAEH’s community-based operating system is proven to work, empowering communities across the country to reduce and end homelessness.
The Model for Ending Homelessness
Our Model for Ending Homelessness is that operating system, built around three pillars:
Everyone is Known
You can’t solve a problem you can’t see. The journey home begins when every person is known by name. We replace bi-annual snap shots and guesswork with timely, person-specific data to effectively guide local response.
Collective Action
We support communities to bring together agencies and programs into a single, focused local effort, with strong local leadership and community buy-in. This coordinated system of care ensures that homelessness is rare, brief, and never happens again.
Reduction Through Improvement
There is no fixed blueprint for ending homelessness. As communities implement the model, they leverage data to test approaches and adapt with speed and precision, getting more effective each day until everyone has a safe place to call home.
Creating the Conditions for Success
CAEH scales local success into a unified national movement by training leaders, building public support, and advocating to senior governments for the policies, funding, and housing supply communities need to stay focused on what matters most: reducing homelessness person by person.
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Leadership
Training highly skilled, adaptive, resilient, and mission-driven local leaders who can unite communities toward the shared aim of ending homelessness.
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Housing Supply
Building more deeply affordable homes, supportive housing, and community housing, to enable local housing-focused interventions.
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Public & Political Will
Public support pushes elected officials to enact policy change and support the investments required to end homelessness.
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Supportive Policy
Implementing better policies at all levels of government to fix the housing crisis, align national action on homelessness, fund housing solutions, provide reasonable income support, and ensure health and social services.
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Funding & Resources
Securing and aligning public, private, and philanthropic investments to support homelessness prevention and permanent housing solutions.
Measurable Progress Across Canada
Ending homelessness is an outcome being achieved and sustained right now. When a community reaches Functional Zero, its housing system routinely connects more neighbours to homes than the number of people entering homelessness.
Driving Change Through Policy & Advocacy
CAEH drives policy change across all levels of government to end homelessness. We advance evidence-based solutions, grow public support, and create the conditions for community success, drawing on local insight to ensure policy is focused on ending homelessness.
Our Impact at a Glance
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Shaping National Policy:
Advocated for and supported the national implementation of Housing First; shaped the National Housing Strategy and designed Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy; helped create a program to address veteran homelessness; and secured emergency funding for local homelessness services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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$80B in Government Investment:
Advocated directly with the federal government for investments in supportive and affordable housing, community homelessness response, innovative local projects, and other homelessness solutions.
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Leading $45M Homelessness Reduction Innovation Fund:
Working directly with communities to design, fund and implement data-driven improvement projects that aim to measurably reduce homelessness at a population level, while developing lessons that can support similar efforts across Canada.
Featured Policy & Advocacy Initiatives
Explore our recent policy analysis and advocacy campaigns driving national change on homelessness.