Addressing Homelessness

Imagine Life Without a Home :

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  Our addresses are so much a part of our identities, practically and emotionally. It is the place where our loved ones can contact us. The place where Christmas cards are sent. The place by which the government keeps track of us. The place where our doctors, dentists and optometrists send reminders to take care of our health.

• Imagine dealing with a chronic physical or emotional illness, perhaps both, but not knowing where you will sleep from night to night. How will you keep your schedule of medications or doctor’s appointments while simply trying to survive?

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   Imagine applying for a job but having to state that your permanent address is c/o the local drop-in, shelter or blank. Most employers will not be impressed. Even if they did want to give you an interview, you don’t have a phone number at which an employer can contact you or your phone number is also the local drop-in centre or shelter.

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  Our home, our address, is an integral of our identity from a practical stand point and an emotional one.

Building a model of supportive housing

• ehm has built a model for affordable, transitional, supportive housing.
  
  
• It is a model in which people live in safe, supportive housing that fosters human dignity by teaching people to do what they can for themselves and giving them opportunities to reach out to others. People are helped to progress from dependence to independence to helping others.

• Staff work with residents, providing counseling and teaching a variety of lifeskills, everything from how to cook meals to anxiety management.
  
  
• Residents learn to do as much for themselves as they individually can. Through the dignity that comes with learning to do for themselves that which they can, self-esteem rises.

• In turn, residents are encouraged to share their skills with others, helping provide supports for fellow residents or members of ehm’s outreach programs. They go from being students to being teachers. They enjoy the dignity of helping others, of not feeling like ‘charity cases.’
  
  
• The result? A supportive, dignified community of peers, not just an apartment building where you pay your rent and live in isolation.