Canada announces launch of Built for Zero

Yesterday Built for Zero’s partners at the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) announced that they had exceeded their goals to house 20,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people experiencing homelessness. 

 

Now they’ve set an ambitious new goal to end chronic homelessness in Canada, as the first step to ending homelessness outright. Their new effort is called Built for Zero Canada, and it will mirror our U.S. Built for Zero movement by working with a group of committed communities to apply data-driven methods to eliminate homelessness.

 

“Homelessness is a disaster— you know it. I know it. We also know it is solvable. Let’s act with the urgency this crisis deserves,” said Tim Richter, President and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

 

Community Solutions has worked with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness since 2014 and partnered to launch the 20,000 Homes Campaign, inspired and adapted from our 100,000 Homes Campaign.

 

“The 20,000 Homes Campaign brought structure and a collective sense of urgency to the work to end homelessness,” said Melanie Lewis Dickerson, Portfolio Lead for Large-Scale Change at Built for Zero. “Reaching this goal required communities to report and use data in a new and more rigorous way and to re-imagine their housing systems to ensure those who were chronically homeless had access to housing.” 

 

The Built for Zero movement was created with the belief that homelessness is a solvable problem. Perhaps the truest test of our methodology is whether it can be spread and adapted successfully by others.

 

“It has been amazing to watch CAEH adapt, build on and add to our shared knowledge base,” said Jake Maguire, Co-Director of Built for Zero. “They are an incredible peer and partner in this work, and we are thrilled to be supporting and learning from their team and their success.”