The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness

We are excited to announce the 2025 Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Prevention Award winners! Sponsored by Canada Life, these awards celebrate organizations that are doing incredible work to prevent youth homelessness across 🇨🇦. 🏆 Winners • CJE Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – MYCASA UNIASHUK • South-Asian Canadians Health and Social Services Canada – Youth Resilience & Housing Stability (YRHS) 🏅 Honourable Mention • United Way British Columbia – Youth Futures Education Fund (YFEF) 🌟 Stay tuned for spotlights that unpack how these programs are helping create a future where no youth experiences homelessness—and the lessons they have for other communities and organizations who are trying to do the same. #MakingTheShift #YouthHomelessnessPreventionAwards #CanadaLife

The winners have been selected! 🏆 Together with A Way Home Canada, we’re excited to share that this year’s #mtspreventionawards, presented by Canada Life, have been chosen. Stay tuned — we’ll be announcing the recipients soon! #YouthHomelessnessPrevention #PreventionAwards

Let’s make Canada a leader in preventing youth homelessness by scaling the school-based Reconnect early intervention model nationwide 🇨🇦. ✅ It works. The model has been successfully scaled across Australia — and tested in Ontario, Alberta, and Newfoundland. ✅ It’s ready. The new Reconnect Program Model Guide & Operations Manual give communities a clear roadmap to bring prevention into schools. ✅ It’s time. Together, we can move closer to ensuring no youth ever goes without a place to call home. 📘 Get the Guide & Manual here: https://shorturl.at/aszmO #ReconnectCanada#YouthHomelessnessPrevention hashtag #SchoolBasedPrevention

📢 SECTOR NEWS! Today we launched NEW EVIDENCE-INFORMED TOOLS to help prevent youth homelessness. 💡 A Program Guide & Operations Manual for a school-based early intervention model called RECONNECT — successfully scaled nationally in Australia, tested across Canada, and now ready to be scaled here. 🤝 We need your help! Please spread the word far and wide — share this post with youth workers, educators, policymakers, and funders in your network. The prevention movement is gaining momentum across Canada, and these new tools are another big step forward. 📘 If you’re interested in the Reconnect model, access the guide & manual here: https://shorturl.at/vDKF4 #ReconnectCanada #YouthHomelessnessPrevention #EducationMatters

🇬🇧 BIG NEWS: The UK is prioritizing homelessness prevention with major investments and a shift to evidence-based, upstream solutions. As Canada prepares for #Budget2025, are we ready to follow their lead? The UK’s approach, backed by billions in prevention, housing, and local authority funding, proves prevention is both the right and smart thing to do. Read our latest blog to see what Canada can learn from the UK’s bold move! 📖 https://lnkd.in/gztHPn59 #HomelessnessPrevention #CDNpoli #Budget2025

Over the past six years, Making the Shift (MtS) has helped change how Canada thinks about youth homelessness — from managing crises to preventing them altogether. Through the Networks of Centres of Excellence, MtS invested $9.3 million in 39 prevention-focused projects, reaching 2,800+ young people and 400 families across the country. The results are clear: prevention works. MtS built the evidence base, the partnerships, and the momentum we need to make prevention the standard — not the exception. 📘 Read the full report → https://shorturl.at/vcdXo #YouthHomelessnessPrevention #MakingTheShift #COH #AWayHomeCanada

Today marks the 16th annual World Homeless Day — it’s a moment to reflect on progress and on what still needs to be done. When the COH first started its work, #prevention was not part of the mainstream conversation. Today, there’s a growing movement around it — in policy, practice, and community. That’s progress. But there’s still more to do. The work lies in turning awareness into action — and making prevention the standard, not the exception. #WorldHomelessDay

We’re excited to launch a new free training on the Homelessness Learning Hub: Reconciliation: Unlearning, Learning and Building Relations. This foundational course helps service providers, researchers, and community practitioners reflect on colonial impacts, unlearn stereotypes, and build respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples. It’s free, online, and comes with a certificate of completion. Start the course here: https://ow.ly/Iv8k50X3cyS

Today is the National Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Gender-Diverse People (MMIWG2S). We honour the lives stolen and the families and communities who continue to carry grief and demand justice. The ongoing crisis of violence against Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people is rooted in colonization, systemic racism, and the dispossession of land and housing. The National Inquiry’s Calls for Justice remain largely unfulfilled. These are not recommendations—they are legal imperatives rooted in human rights. Canada must take urgent action to end this genocide: - Full implementation of the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry - Safe, affordable, culturally-rooted housing as a cornerstone of ending gendered violence - Real accountability from governments at every level