Restoring Home Fires – No Indigenous person should be houseless on their own land.

No Indigenous person should be houseless on their own land

INDIGENOUS HOMELESSNESS

REQUIRES A DIFFERENT

CULTURAL APPROACH

THERE IS A NEED

There is a housing need in the community for houseless Indigenous People in the City of Edmonton. This can include Indigenous individuals, including youth and families, and Indigenous persons being discharged from corrections, hospitals, and treatment facilities. This requires emergency, preventative, transitional, mental health support and long-term housing for this particular population. EICE is looking for innovative ways from community Non-Profit agencies to address this need.

OUR MANDATE

Red Road Healing Society (RRHS), as the Edmonton Indigenous Community Entity (EICE), is mandated to reduce Indigenous homelessness by utilizing direct support from Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy Directives for Indigenous Communities (Reaching Home, 2023).

Indigenous homelessness

Indigenous Peoples who are in the state of having no home due to colonization, trauma and/or whose social, cultural, economic, and political conditions place them in poverty. Having no home includes those who alternate between sheltered and unsheltered, living on the street, couch surfing, using emergency shelters, living in unaffordable, inadequate, substandard and unsafe accommodations or living without the security of tenure. Anyone, regardless of age, released from facilities (such as hospitals, mental health and addiction treatment centers, prisons, and transition houses), fleeing unsafe homes as a result of abuse in all its definitions, and any youth transitioning from all forms of care” (Reaching Home, 2023). It is often the result of what is known as systemic or societal barriers, including a lack of affordable and appropriate housing, the individual/household’s financial, mental, cognitive, behavioural or physical challenges, and/or racism and discrimination.