A Strategy for True Homelessness Recovery

On March 18th, Mentor/Mentee Canada presented to the Ontario Peer Development Initiative on building an empowerment strategy to better support and sustain connection with the Homeless.

Peer Support and Front Line relationships can overcome homelessness and oppression; build healthy relationships to support employment of Lived expertise. In 2021, we have the potential for a multi-sector Peer Movement of leadership out of homelessness for true recovery.

The presentation below outlines the way forward:

Mentor Mentee Canada began on a transition house bed 2 years ago.  If I had had a Mentor when I was 20 my life would have been so much less stressful. I didn’t have the support I needed to prevent my long fall into homelessness - and I only found out about the services, resources and skill training that I needed when I was at rock bottom, all options spent, and I headed on a freezing February night to sleep on a mat on the floor of a drop in, to later move to an emergency shelter.

It was there that we women supported one another around the dining room table, shared resources, and we had the answers to better support and connect with others like us.  But no one was asking us for our solutions to homelessness, or how to prevent homelessness.  We were of all ages – the multicultural complex diverse homeless of Toronto, and most of us undiagnosed and untreated for mental health issues and addictions.

As lived experience people we have lost everything, all of our belongings, and often all of our relationships, but found community in one another because of our experiences.  We understood each other in the shelter - the feeling of worthlessness, shame, otherness, fear and insecurity.  Feeling less than human. 

We also have in common that we are retraumatized in shelters. The long lasting harm wasn’t from living closely pre-Covid with each other as very, very sick residents. It was from the one staff here, and one staff there who did more harm than good. 

Mentor/Mentee began because of oppression and stigma – the poverty of complex homelessness.  It exists for Nita, the frail young woman who was evicted from my shelter by police at midnight in a storm; and Stephanie who came to my shelter with her child strapped to her; and Jeffrey who was evicted from a respite centre during a long Toronto’s heat wave with all of her belongings, no transportation and obvious mental health issues. 

I had heard about mentoring, and I researched mentoring in the United States and the United Kingdom.  Individuals who have mentoring earn substantially more money per year than those who don’t.  Mentors can help Canadians who are sick according to the Social Determinants of Health -  50% of Canadians who are sick from life can benefit from having Peer Support or Peer Mentoring.  I hadn’t heard about Peer Support until the Ontario Peer Development Initiative – when I decided to risk my hard won new apartment to pay for the perfect wheel skill training there.

Mentor/Mentee doesn’t want to duplicate services, but design a collaborative team building framework focused on healing Peers, communities, and a system with our leadership, with what we need to sustain employment.

I tried to fill in the gaps with the Recovery based Peer Training that’s provided at Mentor Mentee, to avoid the pitfalls of working in underdeveloped team environments that Peers face in organizations - and for those without having a formal education - or a structured upbringing like myself, to be able to work in a collective and collaborative team, and know how to build a Peer program and inform Supervision if we’re just inserted into the role.   

The training is free and available for Peers to experience - and then have the ongoing support to bring it to their community, in small groups.  As is the organizational skills for Peers -- to gather people, and call on community stakeholders as I did with the Mentor/Mentee Canada Panel Discussions started over a year ago to grow the Peer Movement, and grow leadership together with Front line, Managers and Peers.   

The recovery based employment essential Peer Support training is available to organizations.   Elizabeth Fry Society Toronto is one organization using it’s value to bring women out of law involvement and the sex trade and into employment.

It’s each of our sector specialties, and developed recovery programs that the homeless truly need – as much as the right housing.  Peer Supporters can spare and care for those who have left mainstream systems, like in the Moss Park encampment this summer 4 blocks up the street where I live.  The homeless are angry at society, and we survive through using substances to numb down the injustice – and everyone there wants wellness, not addictions.  Together we have the Peer Support language and relationship skills to hold every person in high regard, and engage them back to something better.

Stephanie from my shelter didn’t move forward out of homelessness with her unsupported concurrent disorders, and many others didn’t like her.  But we Peers know where the five star program is to overcome the detox barrier of going though both withdrawal of fentanyl and nicotine at the same time. We know how to inform victim services for the women trafficked by drug lords who need our support for their safety there.  We need to be in the encampments!

Were behavioral specialists.  We could advocate against Jeff’s eviction from the respite centre, and support her healthier behaviour.  Importantly, we’re transition specialists to prevent homelessness, especially when facing eviction like over 5,500 in Toronto in the last two months. 

We can transition skills, talents, passions for those who have lost their job to encourage new employment roles, as we have done for ourselves. We are sharers of resources, services, tools and skills that our Peers aren’t aware of to both prevent their fall into homelessness, as well as help them move forward to recovery.

Yes, we need Housing First – but we can help navigate to the right housing as recovered lived experienced people.  Too many of us continue through the costly revolving doors of main stream systems. There are organizations in the United states like HOMInc who say they couldn’t do near the work they do in housing without Peer Specialists.  It could be the same here.

 All systems are thinking recovery and we have the beginnings of involvement and inclusion as Peer Leaders from key stakeholders.   Our Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) responded to the lived experience delegates who attend their yearly conference.  We wanted the skills to organize ourselves and advocate for ourselves and the they responded to involve us in their Recovery for all Housing Campaign. 

And although we already know the answers as lived experience people, the Maphealth Marco Project will provide the data findings to drive impact dollars in the right direction as community developed and evaluated with our input to Peer programs for needed systems change.

The Pipeline Project of the Toronto Shelter Network is building Peer employment. Their survey to investigate employment barriers for the homeless looked suspiciously like they are building a Peer House – asking if we would like positions of Peer Management, Peer Human Resources, Peer Financial Officer – so I think its safe to say they are on our side. And the CAEH Lived experience leadership facebook portal invites us to engage, and post our voices there.  The Shelter Recovery Network is accelerating Peers into housing  – just as Mentor/Mentee Canada is through The Housing Accelerator Program. 

But we’ve had housing from homelessness for 40 years, and it hasn’t been true recovery housing.  Our collaboration is needed that to happen.  The right housing is cooperative living – that’s developmental as well as supportive. We need to build in wellness programs and the built in life skill programs to gain recovery from homelessness, otherwise a fresh new start can quickly turn into ongoing oppression and dependence – especially in supportive housing which the CAEH says is the future out of homelessness, yet  50% of Peers remain unwell there. 

It starts with being able to live cooperatively. Think of how we start our Peer Support training programs to create an environment of equality, learning from one another, a non judgmental, safe, sensitive, supportive environment. Peer Support training is foundational for healthy relationships. Professionally, but also to use personally, and gain back lost relationships, lost family. That’s so important to the homeless. In Peer Support training, we open the gates of recovery through learning about the best services and resources, and learning the right communication for cooperative living and advocating over social injustice. 

We add on to the mental health wellness programs that you in the mental health sector have perfectly developed as co created and co-designed with Peers for inclusion and involvement in a healthy community - not isolated but growing with self care.  Knowledge is power, and we don’t know what we don’t know as Peers from homelessness.  

Built into every entrance, at fresh new start of supportive housing, the entrance to the respite centre, the entrance to the harm reduction room or entrance of safe injection site to exit through considering a different alternative door, and not get stuck there - Peer programs into employment as an initiation cycle out of ongoing homelessness – otherwise the fresh new start quickly turns to dependence with substances, or drug victimization as the alternative built in program.  

Our organizations are our employers.  That includes Disability Offices, Foster Care offices, and Hospital Units.  A multi sector collaborative recovery program is the blueprint for more peer employment.

We homeless are so fearful of losing the little we have – disability benefits, the retraumatizing housing that violates human rights.  But layer upon layer of motivation with the right incentives – finances, food, transportation funds and devices for online learning we’re able to be employment ready, and life ready.  Otherwise, we remain on the sidelines, watching the purposeful morning commute, and left with a sense of loss.

Think about the Recovery Isolation Sites, the new shelters… we’re not wanted in new communities. The life skills and home skill programs are missing that makes for learning community living.   Without learning programs, we remain in the insecurity of poverty – and we end up in isolation, and back in the hospitals and prisons, those other housing environments. 

It’s spending in the right way that’s needed.  Covid happened.  The funding wasn’t spent on devices for the homeless to have reliable online learning as it was in the Peer Mental Health Sector. The mental health Peer sector pivoted more quickly than any other organization to assure their Peers had engagement and connection. Our funds were spent, in some cases, on infrastructure - bed bug de-infestation and extreme cleans.  Those were Covid dollars.  These are a Landlords responsibility in the first place.  The homeless became isolated, and substance use spiked as did overdose deaths.  

We need to guarantee, as Peers, our right to learn – to have devices to use and online access for wellness and social connection – we need that funding to go to the Homeless.   That’s empowerment not inertia. We need to overcome the past through building self virtue.

Our collective efforts to grow Peer Programs and Peer Employment scales up our capacity.  It can remove the stigma of homelessness by changing the face of homelessness.  We are resilient, talented, able, brilliant and vulnerable - which is really very powerful.  I didn’t think I was well enough to work and barriers were stacked against me – over 55, chronic pain from arthritis, a diagnosed anxiety and depression disorder, a criminal record, a grade 10 education – I didn’t have a credit rating.  I didn’t think I could show up for a training. But little by little, I took in more information, more skills, accepted the employment where I could work independently and learn from the one or two organizations that sustained connection with me and supported my employment development. Collectively we can encourage and support the vulnerable to successful, to reach back into the system to help.

Mentor/Mentee Canada is developing Recovery Peer Roles.  Organizations aren’t set up to empower Front line to do recovery, and mainstream isn’t supporting the Front line work that being done.  Front line document detailed engagements with Peers, and the data is used to support organizational funding.  It could inform needed change.

There is a conflict in the Supportive Housing Worker role as a representative of the Landlord.  It’s a conflict to recovery.  Peer Support input isn’t sought in the Ontario Common Assessment of Need when we have the recovery relationship.  Students are given the OPOC (Ontario Common Assessment of Need) role to learn – but to coopt a Peer role isn’t fair, a shared academic and Peer role would be better for the needed OPOC. The good at management can work alongside Peer Workers and learn from us to transform our systems.  There is mis-management of Peer Support in housing, and it’s holding us back, and the system back.  Management is guaranteeing safe organizational funding, safe staff, what about safe clients in emotionally intelligent environments.

Organizations can learn from our collaboration.  Creating more Peer Support opportunities shouldn’t take away another’s work – There is more than enough work in recovery for all of us, building housing is very expensive, it will take time and were needed now as employed in existing housing environments. 

The strategy forward is an employment Push – let’s help the homeless get out of poverty – let’s create purpose over isolation that can self-actualize our way out of addictions, and dependence. 

We want to self organize – as Peer houses where lived experienced are welcome and can recover – a campaign of Peer employment could bring Peer Houses to Canada.  There are many supporting and sustaining the homeless across the United States.

I want to invite you to a few action steps to increase awareness of what the homeless need and to increase awareness to prevent homelessness.

First, I’d like to invite you to the Slack channel at Mentor/Mentee Canada to grow the awareness of your organizations and resources in Toronto for the complex homeless.  There is a survey if you are an agency or hospital in Toronto with a brand new Peer program to let us know about you, and grow the Peer Movement.

The next action step is one our municipal parliamentary representatives get behind – a recovery based Lived Experience path forward in multi-sector employment.  It looks good for politicians and for communities. 

This is the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Recovery for All campaign.  You can add to the letter there campaigning for housing to your MP that you want recovery that includes Lived Experience Peer employment.  The tabs at the top of the page invite you to take a further step and Tweet the campaign, to make it public, with a call to action for the Peer Movement for the homeless now to have Peer Support jobs.  And you can call your MP, leave a message with your email address and ask them to respond to you,  to tell you what action they are taking for the homeless to house and employ them.  When you enter your postal code the letter and the telephone call will be connected directly to the MP in your riding.

And finally I’d like to invite you back in one month time to a leaders circle, there we can decide if we want to create a collaborative resource video, a first step of a media campaign, and say to our housing sector this is for every entrance that the homeless walk through to raise awareness of what is available for their recovery and to make a pathway forward together from the homeless sector, from the out of incarceration sector, and from the mental health sector.

And we can share our collaboration together at the re-set People with Lived Experience Connection Conference with hope it can be in person, just prior to the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Conference in 2021 online.

Let’s rise together – and lift every Peer with us - because recovery is our brand of leadership.