Bridging Service for Homeless Migrants : Perspectives of Newcomers and Service Providers

1. Bridging Service for Homeless Migrants : Perspectives of Newcomers and Service Providers Drs. Christine A. Walsh & David Este, Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary Dr. Jill Hanley & Sonia Ben Soltane School of Social Work, McGill University 16th National Metropolis Conference, Gatineau, Quebec, March 15, 2001

2. Research Team /Funding Investigators Nicole Ives & Jill Hanley School of Social Work, McGill University Christine A. Walsh & David Este Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary Funding by Human Resources Skill Development Canada, Homeless Partnering Secretariat

3. Agenda • Overview of housing sector & housing (Christine) • Invisibilities Study (Christine) • Bridging Collaborations Study (Sonia) • Findings from Calgary (Dave) • Findings from Montreal (Jill) • Preliminary Recommendations (Jill) • Questions

4. Definitions • Housing insecurity: from absolute homeless, such as those residing in shelters to the invisible homeless, such as those living with friends or family, to those at risk of homelessness, such as those living in substandard housing or are at risk of losing their homes (Echenberg & Jensen 2008; Girard 2006). • Newcomers : foreign-born migrants who came to Canada in the last 10 years, regardless of their immigration status.

5. Background • Immigrants and refugees in Canada are multiply disadvantaged in terms of housing insecurity, risk and experiences of homelessness • They face greater risk of homelessness as a consequence of uncertain immigration status, unrecognized employment and education credentials, isolation, discriminatory rental and accommodation practices, and mental illness. • Gender discrimination gives women particular vulnerabilities related to housing

6. Background • Migrant women’s homelessness has been the subject of little investigation, typically subsumed within categories of women’s homelessness or newcomers housing insecurity, both of which neglect the broader contextual realities of homeless newcomer women. • Few shelters are “mandated or adequately resourced to meet the needs of this population [immigrant or refugees]” and, in turn, “immigrant serving agencies are also ill-equipped and under-funded and not mandated to address housing issues” (Pruegger & Tanasescu, 2007, p. 3).

7. Uncovering Invisibility(ies): Understanding experiences ofneWcomerwomen across the homeless spectruminCalgary and Montréal

8. Study Objectives • To gather information through qualitative interviews with immigrant women in Montréal and Calgary concerning the unique aspects of homelessness for women immigrants

9. Methodology • Exploratory, qualitative, in-depth interviews with immigrant women facing housing insecurity in Montreal (n=15) and Calgary (n=15) to understand their experiences and needs. • Semi-structured interviews with key informant shelter workers about their work with migrants • Interviews were audio-recorded and analyzed using the constant comparative method (Dye et al., 2000)

10. Findings: Themes • Factors contributing to precarious housing “Every time I would call asking for a house and they would ask, ‘Oh, you have an accent. Where do you come from?’ When I told them I am from Africa, well, the apartment was taken.” • Tipping points preceded bouts of housing instability “my roommate decided one day to kick me out saying her husband was coming the next day and she did not want us to share the space” • Strategies to avoid absolute homelessness Exchanging unpaid labour (childcare, eldercare, housekeeping) for shelter

11. Future Directions • Training on newcomer women’s needs for housing organizations and settlement services • Wrap-around services in terms of health, housing and immigration settlement • Transitional housing that caters to the specific needs of this population.

12. Exploring collaboration processes across sectors: Bridging services for newcomerS with experiences across the homelessness spectrum

13. Background • In our previous study, women identified gaps in service provision from these sectors. • The goal of intersectoral collaboration is to bring individuals and members of communities, agencies and organizations together in an atmosphere of support to systematically address existing and emerging challenges that cannot be addressed by one group alone. • Research on the nature and effectiveness of intersectoral collaboration has not been examined in the context of housing and newcomer women.

14. Research Questions • What collaborations currently exist among entities working with newcomers in Montreal and Calgary? • How did these collaborations begin and evolve? • What are challenges/facilitators to collaboration? • What strategies have been used to facilitate collaboration among organizations working with homeless populations and entities working with newcomers? • In what ways does collaboration shape • the local settlement system, • local homelessness organizations, and • newcomer integration in Montreal and Calgary more broadly?

15. Methodology Qualitative exploratory multi-method study: • Collect grey literature from community groups addressing homelessness, housing, women’s issues in both Alberta and Quebec. • Conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with service providers working with immigrant and homeless populations in Calgary and Montreal. • Organize workshops in Calgary and Montreal in order to discuss how to share knowledge obtained from the study across sectors.

16. Calgary Completed interviews with 19 key informants representing: • 6 immigrant-serving agencies • 7 homeless-serving agencies • 2 women-serving agencies

17. Results Immigrant Women Complex Needs: poverty, time to integrate, culturally informed gender roles and vulnerability in family breakdown Immigrant Sector Unmet Need Housing Sector Internal Collaborative Factors Collaborative factors are those that fall within agencies’ mandates External Collaborative Factors Structures and systems imposed on agencies that affect the level of collaboration that can occur between sectors.

18. Women’s Complex Needs

19. Women’s Complex Needs POVERTY Inability to Secure Employment “When they can find work [immigrant women] are working at low income and sometimes worse than that, worse than minimum wage.” Employment Qualifications Denied “I had one family…they had a lot of stress in the family just to make ends meet. Mom had a Masters degree in some sort of science, food, biotechnology, yet was working at the drycleaners. Hard work. Like this was a smart woman. And I could just see the family becoming more and more depressed and not functioning very well.” Hidden Homelessness “Hidden homelessness exists in the immigrant population because of poverty. Newcomer children stay with their parents because they live on minimum wages and they can’t afford to be independent. When you have to cut your losses you might decide to stay and live in an extended family environment to save money. Not because it’s healthy.”

20. Women’s Complex Needs ELIGIBILITY FOR SERVICES “I think there’s not really an understanding of what status means. [Service providers] just see newcomers coming and needing housing and they don’t necessarily realize that those are people coming specific types of status in Canada and that there’s a specific sector that serve [each status population].” TIME TO INTEGRATE “Integration takes a minimum of seven years for somebody who comes to Canada without the knowledge of language.”

21. CULTURALLY-INFORMED GENDER ROLES Dependent and Isolated “[Some newcomer women] can’t speak the language, they can’t speak English, and become very isolated. Some have to be within their own communities. There is no bridging social capital. They are just, kind of, there.” Family Caregivers “They're likely to have to choose between raising their children, sending them to child care, finding good child care and getting subsidy. If you make enough money then you're on that fringe of getting subsidy but all your money is going to child care how do you feed your kids, how do you pay for the rest of the stuff? That’s when the housing situations come into play and [newcomer women] are at risk of losing it.” Changes in Social Roles “When [a newcomer] comes to this country, the man wants to have again the same authority over [the women]. No one wants to give up power easily. Then the women finds out that she has rights too…then the dispute starts there.” Cultural Taboo “There are probably cultural taboos against the women expressing [her needs].” Domestic Violence “There’s overlap between domestic violence and immigrant families and there’s overlap between domestic violence and homelessness. So of course there’s the overlap between domestic violence, immigrant families and homelessness. They’re all intertwined.” Women’s Specific Needs

22. FAMILY BREAKDOWN “Stress comes as a result of family breakdown because [immigrant women] are down to one income and [the father] may or may not be paying child-care support. Often mom is left with children and is maybe re-educating, re-careering, or just learning English. A lot of women are sheltered women. They are isolated. They are sheltered. They don't know what is going on around them. They have no resources and their husband has been oppressing them in that way that’s very difficult for them…That’s where we see a lot of women challenged with housing. They can't make their rent. It’s either just under their reach or absolutely impossible.” Women’s Specific Needs

23. Internal Collaborative Factors

24. Internal Collaborative Factors Unified Mandate “A lot of [collaboration] just has to do with a memorandum of understanding and communicating expectations and all of that kind of stuff…those are just the obstacles that one has to go through in order to get to a place where you’re running a good efficient partnership or collaboration. When I think challenges or opportunities, I think about philosophy’s that stop relationships from happening.” Allocation of Resources “The administrative demands on programs is huge all the way from the frontline workers- who are busy filling out progress reports, outcomes, pretests, post-tests, surface plans- to [administration] who are constantly on the revolving funding cycle… [The lack of collaboration] is not out of malice. It’s out of just plain inability. It just doesn’t happen…Collaborations are expensive and nobody wants to pay for them.”

25. Internal Collaborative Factors Knowledge “When you mention immigration to the case management team, just their eyes, they get scared. There’s a lack of understanding…I know there’s like the issue of diversity and there’s the issue of immigration and they meld together...It’s just [service providers] don’t understand it so they want someone else to deal with it but they don’t know who to go to.” Infrastructure to Support Collaboration “When the Calgary Coalition on Family Violence existed [collaboration] was easy. There was no effort, you all sat around the table and you said to the person across the table “Let’s work together” and then you do. The [Calgary Coalition] exists and has encouraged all 9 sectors to collaborate and to talk collectively and to support and to invest.” Intention to Collaborate  “We had another worker who had that active, very active passion in the immigration area and she had developed relationships [in the immigrant sector]. I don’t know how, but it really is just you make that conscious effort.”

26. External Collaborative Factors

27. External Collaborative Factors Funding Structures “There are things that could be put in place to make things more comfortable for all of us. For an agency of our size and reputation we don’t struggle for funding. But I appreciate with smaller agencies,they may feel like they need to prove themselves every single year. Which doesn’t exactly foster an environment of collaboration if you need to be the one to say “I’m the one that did this”. You need to be able to share in success... but we don’t have the same pressures that other have. So even looking at long term core funding instead of just forever searching for that next small funding stream.” Brokering Sectors “When one of the sectors is a women’s organization sitting around the table, and us you know, being in the grumpy feminists, we remind everybody that every sector in our opinion intersects with our sector. So by reminding them over and over and over again that they intersect, it helps them to understand that when they’re looking at systems planning.”

28. External Collaborative Factors Policy & Legislation “Housing first programs are all harm reduction. They prioritize chronically homeless. So this doesn’t fit for this population who is still in desperate need of affordable housing.” Coordination Bodies “[Agencies] almost need…to be encouraged. Let’s just say they need to be encouraged together through a body that comes together that is encouraging. I think of Homeless Foundation. They had a way of making people work together in ways that help solve homelessness.”

29. Findings: Montreal • Completed interviews with 19 key informants representing: • 7 settlement agencies • 12 housing agencies • The needs of newcomers, women and men, were very similar to those identified in Calgary

30. Service Provision Context • Quebec government offers limited funds for housing search & housing rights education for newcomers • Recent changes to MICC program • Significant social housing funding but limited eligibility for precarious status • Tripartite funding for tenants rights organizations

31. Settlement Agencies Standard housing practices of settlement agencies: • Workshops on the Quebec housing market & tenants rights • Housing search support • Referrals to shelters • Mostly done by outside agency designated by MICC

32. Challenges for settlement Challenges encountered by settlement agencies: • Basic social condition of newcomers leading to discrimination • Very tight housing market • Changes to MICC funding takes autonomy from settlement agencies to address housing issues (4 designated orgs)

33. Housing organizations Standard housing services offered to newcomers • Emergency shelter • Tenant rights advocacy • Access to social housing for permanent residents (long waiting lists) • Housing search (not accompaniment)

34. Challenges for housing Challenges faced by housing organizations in serving newcomers • Immigration status limiting eligibility • Lack of understanding of migration-related experiences • Funding cuts for migration-related shelter • Lack of funding or structures for transitional housing • Very limited family-appropriate housing

35. Portrait of collaboration Very limited collaboration across sectors • Strong referral networks • Specialization of housing services for newcomers • Nearly no truly joint projects • New approaches emerging

36. Cross-over practices In recent years, new initiatives: • Social housing projects intentionally targeting permanent residents (co-op vs. non-profit) • Non-government shelters • Partnership with private sector • Linking newcomers to residents to share housing

37. Preliminary Implications • Service providers, funders and coordination bodies need to have a greater understanding of the intersection between housing and immigrant services in order to better meet the needs of newcomer women • Collaboration incentives should be integrated into municipal, provincial and federal policy to ensure that complex needs can be addressed in service provision • Agencies and funders need to prioritize collaboration efforts and allocate resources to increase collaboration from frontline staff to administration levels. • Collaboration efforts should be guided by unified mandates to ensure engagement with partners for the long-term • Institutes that serve a coordination role for collaboration should continue to be established as they provide a significant role in addressing the collaboration required to solve complex social issues

38. References • Walsh, C.A., & Este, D. (2012). Uncovering Invisibilities: Understanding Experiences of Newcomer Women Across the Homelessness Spectrum in Calgary, funded by the Prairie Metropolis Foundation, through the Social Science and Humanities Council. • Walsh, C.A., Hanley, J., Ives, N., Hordyk, S.-R., & Mahano, B. (2011). Uncovering Invisibilities: Understanding Experiences of Newcomer Women Across the Homelessness Spectrum in Montreal, funded by the Homeless Partnership Strategy, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. • Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative. (2003). Best Practices for Working with Homeless Immigrants and Refugees. A Community-Based Action-Research Project. Phase I: Research. Executive Summary. Toronto: Access Alliance Multicultural Community Health Centre. Available via the Virtual Library of the PCERII Metropolis website: http://pcerii.metropolis.net/frameset_e.html. • Pruegger, V., & Tanasescu, A. (2007). Housing issues of immigrants and refugees in Calgary.Calgary, AB: Poverty Reduction Coalition, United Way of Calgary and Area, and The City of Calgary.

39. Questions?