Summary

Make a Smart 
Investment and help 
support these areas 
of Best Practice 
Housing:

Tenant Support 

Breakfast Program

Guest Room

• In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, three privately owned rooming houses (Jubilee, Dodson and Powell Rooms) provide safe and supportive housing for 175 persons that are at-risk to homelessness or substandard housing.
• The endeavor utilizes a system of bottom-up style of building management, self regulation by a tenant-based “elders” team and tenant support services that are self-sustaining.
• The single room occupancy housing centers are self-organizing communities that promote best practices. The operation does not rely on the public purse for funding.
• The infrastructure of the rooming houses is supported by a three legged-stool comprised of benevolent investors, agenda free altruists and innovative social services providers.
• Outcomes of the endeavor are a reduction in the risk factors that lead to homelessness (untreated mental illness and substance abuse) and recidivism rate (return to homelessness) of less than 5%.

Mission
Best Practice Housing exists to provide safe and supportive housing for persons that are at risk to homelessness through self-sustaining social housing networks.

Vision
The Best Practice Housing initiative has a vision to expand its operations in Metro Vancouver and to become an operationally affordable alternative to government funded social housing endeavors in Canada and the United States.

Values
Participants of Best Practice Housing value the following:

• respect for all persons
• clean, safe, supportive and affordable community living
• privacy and self-determined living
• bottom-up development
• restorative justice

Goals
The goals of the Best Practice Housing model for single room occupancy facilities are:

• to reduce homelessness
• to reduce the risk factors to homelessness in a population of marginalized persons
• to create self-sustaining social networks that fosters a spirit of wellness

Methods
The primary methods used to achieve the best practice model are:

• privately funded building ownership that enhances innovation and a spirit of “community ownership” in the three rooming houses
• a relational approach to tenant support that works closely with community health services
• an integrated building maintenance initiative
• a bottom-up style of indigenous controls that allows "elders" to maintain a spirit of wellness in the buildings
• a tenant support program that liaises with community services providers to daily breakfast program and periodic “community kitchen” endeavors

Social Networks 
This safe and supportive housing model attempts to utilize an "organic" mix of tenants to create a social network that sustains SRO equilibrium. Support staff strives to maintain a 50-40-10 balance (50% low income, 40% hard-to-house and 10% not-housing-ready) although in reality most of the people seeking housing are hard-to-house and thus it is almost impossible to keep this balance. There is a 25% annual change in the tenant population. Some tenants have lived in the building for over 20 years. In the rooming houses healthy tenants routinely provide peer counseling to tenant with a wide range of mental and physical illnesses including addiction issues. The community of tenants is aided when “outside” support or governing influences adopt an “incarnational” and non intrusive approach.

Spiritual Equity
The spiritual equity of the wellness-focused communities is fostered in private settings and makes it possible for tenants and supporters to overcome obstacles to growth and development. It is the practice of elders and best practice staff to be inclusive and non judgmental. The spiritual equity of the communities is held together by both meditation, private prayer for the wellness of the community, and by a focus on practical acts such as cleaning, building maintenance, nutritional supports, hospital and prison visitation and small group relational meetings of mutual support and validation. 

Unifying Harm Reduction and Abstinence Models
Tenants at the Jubilee, Dodson and Powell Rooms are supported with a "harm reduction" approach in that they are welcomed as they are and therefore are allowed to “use” in their rooms. Dealing, violent and criminal activities, however, are strictly prohibited. Tenants also receive all the benefits of "abstinence-based" services in that there are numerous twelve-step peer counseling and recovery options available.

Staffing Rationale
Support services are provided in the three rooming houses by a team of twenty persons employed exclusively to support the 175 tenants. Team members include consultants, a human resources supervisor, administrators, tenant support workers, and maintenance and pest control personnel. Wage rates for tenant support and maintenance employees are competitive with remuneration paid to other rooming house employees funded through senior levels of government.

A small but strategic group of these twenty staff members are indigenous to the Downtown Eastside and thus enable an essential link to both the "elders" in the buildings and the general tenant population. In addition, a small portion of the maintenance work is performed by tenants in order to provide both employment for marginalized persons and to foster a sense of ownership among the tenant population. Because 75% of the tenants are housed long-term, this casual labor pool maintains are healthy community.

Funding and Long Term Ownership Objectives
Funding for the best practice operation is private and comes from three social entrepreneurs. The goal is for the operations to be self-sustaining. This objective that can be achieved through an economy of scale, volunteer efforts and a lean business plan (benevolent investors routinely “top-up” the current budgets because self-sufficiently has not yet been realized). Tenant rents pay for basic building costs. Tenant support services rely, in part, on chartable contributions (currently, the tenant support program is being upgraded thanks to a thirteen month public/private project funded by Human Resources and Social Development Canada, the benevolent investors and the Community Builders society). The long term goal of the initiative is to enable future society ownership of the buildings. Current investments are not profit-based.

Volunteer Program
A volunteer program operated by the Community Builders society enables a wide range of volunteers to support the tenants with nutritional needs, extra room cleaning and maintenance services. Over 300 different volunteers enter the three buildings every year in a discreet and “organic” manner. Many on-on-one relationships have resulted from these altruistic efforts.

Outcomes
The best practice housing model effort is quantifiably reducing risks factors to homelessness such as mental illness and addiction, and ameliorates the rate of recidivism for homeless persons after a minimum housing stay. A 2005 research initiative sponsored by Human Resources and Social Development, Anhart Holdings and the Community Builders Benevolence Group revealed that risk factors to homelessness were reduced by 40-60% after a six week stay in a rooming house committed to best practices. Of the 100 tenants that were studied over a one year period none returned to homelessness after a minimum six week stay in the facilities. The current “global” rate of recidivism is 5%.

Need for Expansion
Ten-twenty housing requests are received per day by the three rooming houses but only three to five rooms are available at the end of each month. Most of the requests come from persons that are absolutely homeless or chronically homeless.