154 submissions sent to Housing Advocate through successful joint project

Planning the project with The Shift

Since fall 2022 NSUN, along with members of the Living/Lived Experience of Homelessness Network (LLEOHN), The Backpack Project, and the Peer2Peer Indigenous Society, have been in discussion with an organization called The Shift around doing a project in Victoria.

The Shift is an organization helmed by Leilani Farha, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Housing from 2014-2020. Farha is a human rights lawyer by training and started The Shift in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and United Cities and Local Government. Farha is also “the central character in the documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing “.

In summer 2022, The Shift approached grassroots groups working on homelessness in several cities across Canada. Here in Victoria they timed their visit to coincide with a visit by the newly appointed Federal Housing Advocate, Marie-Josée Houle. Representatives from The Shift, as well as Houle and local members of her team, met with folks from NSUN, LLEOHN, The Backpack Project, and others with lived and living experience of homelessness.

In the fall, we began discussions with The Shift about a project that would see NSUN and other groups support people with experience of being unhoused (either currently or previously) make submissions about their experiences to the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (OFHA). We spent a lot of time that fall figuring out how to do this work.

Gathering insight from those with lived experience

Finally, in March 2023 the Housing Submission went live on the OFHA website and we were off!

Among ourselves we had whispered the goal of 100 submissions, but it was such a long road to getting started that we didn’t really think that this was obtainable.

Our first couple of events were small and gathered less than 10 submissions at each. That all changed on April 14, when we had a fantastically successful event where we collected 27 submissions. Another big event on Pandora Avenue on April 21 garnered 79 submissions, far exceeding our goal of 30. And then at our final submission event at Topaz Park on May 12, we collected 14 more submissions. We also held a roundtable discussion event May 26th that garnered more policy-focused information.

Along with submissions collected one-on-one, we have sent a total of 154 submissions to the OFHA!

The original deadline for submissions was May 26, but that was extended to June 20, and our group of collaborating organizations will continue to collect submissions until then.

Insights will inform report recommendations

The submissions to the OFHA will go into a report that the Advocate will produce with recommendations for the federal Minister responsible for housing. This will likely be out in fall 2023.

NSUN thanks all members that were involved in the project, as well as the other organizations that came together and worked so hard to make this project such a huge success.

And of course our most sincere thanks go to all those with lived and living experience of homelessness who shared with us so genuinely. They are the real heroes of this story.