Every Canadian deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. Currently, Veterans are disproportionately represented in the Canadian population of those experiencing homelessness. Exploring non-traditional housing solutions that meet the needs of Veterans will work towards reducing homelessness, provide opportunities for Veterans to build equity, and create opportunities to house other priority needs populations. This process will also serve as an opportunity to build knowledge, data, and empathy among community members to expand the understanding of the lived experience of Veterans experiencing homelessness.
In June of 2023, Green Violin, a community development company that delivers sustainable housing in Edmonton, Alberta, and Intelligent Futures, a Solutions Lab Consultant that navigates complex challenges, launched the Veterans Village Housing Lab - a National Housing Strategy Solutions Lab funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
The CMHC Solutions Lab program offers organizations with funding and expertise to help them solve complex housing problems, and explore new ways of making progress on a housing challenge. These labs fuel bottom-up collaborative innovation by bringing diverse groups of people together to solve complex housing problems to help inform decision making at all levels.
Context
The Veterans Village housing lab is working to find innovative, affordable housing solutions that explore issues of mental health, affordable financing, and communal living concepts in housing amongst Veterans who have served in the Canadian military, police, or first responder organizations. Ultimately, the Veterans Village housing lab is working towards solutions that help Veterans in Edmonton transition into permanent housing and jobs, and can be replicated to meet Veteran’s needs across Canada.
The Complex Challenge
Through a collaborative, innovative process, this Solutions Lab will take a holistic approach to understand the factors that influence the challenge question at hand. These factors include:
Through the Lab process, an interdisciplinary group of committed organizations will collaborate to explore this complex system, co-creating and testing potential solutions to improve housing in Edmonton for Veterans experiencing homelessness. The intended result is a roadmap that reflects the learning of the Lab and provides other Canadian cities with ideas, models and solutions that can be applied to help improve Veterans housing across the country.