Status of Women committee  I think you're exactly right. I will give you an example of one of the things that we're learning. We've seen the housing first approach applied at the community housing program at Discovery House in Calgary. We've also seen that model replicated in, I think, eight or nine different cities around the country.

Status of Women committee  Lise spoke to this in terms of the funding for these shelters and for the staff, noting how different it can be from coast to coast. I want to emphasize the point that one of my colleagues made, which is that the chronic underfunding of women's programs and services is in itself a form of violence against women.

Status of Women committee  I would say so. One of the key differences is the level of violence, I think, that women will experience when they're homeless, and also their vulnerability on the streets and in homeless systems, but I think it's important to understand that we tend to look at domestic violence and homelessness through the prism of the system that we're looking at it from.

Status of Women committee  I think it's a mistake to think about this as a homogeneous population. These are individual women with individual needs. They're often the leaders of families. What's challenging about homelessness in Canada, especially for women, is that we don't actually know.... When you look at mainstream homeless shelters, you can see that women are about 20% of the population.

Status of Women committee  There are a lot of things to consider. First is the level of violent victimization. Second, they're often with children or separated from their children. Third, they also often find themselves sexually exploited. Fourth, they find that the difference is that the homeless systems are actually made for men, right?

Status of Women committee  Yes. Women in the domestic violence system can’t access the resources of the homelessness system because those systems restrict homelessness to mainstream homeless programs. These barriers are compounded by involvement in child welfare systems, racism and complex mental health and addiction concerns of having a gender identity that falls outside the binary.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for this opportunity. I'm pleased to be speaking to you from the traditional territories of the people of Treaty No. 7 region in southern Alberta. The city of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, region three. I'm here in my capacity as president and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

Human Resources committee  There's a question on how you deliver and who you target. If you imagine the homeless population in Canada, you take a population and think about it like a pie chart. Think about an inverted triangle. At the bottom of that inverted triangle is about 15% of the overall homeless population—85% to 90% of all homeless people get themselves out of it.

Human Resources committee  I think that referred to the low income housing tax credit where a $150-million investment in tax credits could create over 4,800 units. Those type of units vary in form, but they would most likely be rental housing in a kind of apartment format.

Human Resources committee  No, it's a tax credit to the investor, to the private equity that is put into the construction of the building. The people in the building would pay affordable rent. It's not a tax credit to the renter, it's a tax credit to the investor, a high net worth individual, for example.

Human Resources committee  One of the benefits of social impact bonds is that they can create a discipline, as you say, around the expected outcome. You're exactly right. Today, we can track every cow from birth to burger in Alberta but we can't tell you how many people experience homelessness in Canada, what happens to them when they're in the system, and what happens to them when they leave.

Human Resources committee  The Americans have been using these for years. They are called the homeless management information systems. There's off-the-shelf technology; it's actually pretty straightforward. But it's a question of how you engage all of the different funders, all of the different agencies in building a standard system.

Human Resources committee  It absolutely can be done. There are good examples of homeless management information systems. There are over 300 communities in the U.S. today that have them. Edmonton and seven cities in Alberta, including Calgary, have management information systems in place. There are variations of it; in Toronto, there's a shelter information system.

Human Resources committee  There are a few points in there, with the first question being, how did we get here? We can trace the rise of modern mass homelessness in Canada to the withdrawal of the federal government. Over the course of probably 25 to 30 years, there's been about a 46% reduction in federal investment in affordable housing.

Human Resources committee  I think there's a huge opportunity. In Calgary, for example, they are in prime real estate. They are low density, so there's lots of space where you could redevelop. You can extract a lot of financial value out of property and redevelop it and maintain that housing for its social housing purpose.