Modelling Transitional Housing for Vulnerable Youth

The Modelling Transitional Housing for Vulnerable Youth Solutions Lab aims to design buildings and support services to better serve youth experiencing homelessness. This lab targets young people who have had contact with the child welfare system and have complex needs. The lab will build on research exploring best practices for physical spaces and wrap-around services to serve this group. Work will focus on building relationships across sectors and sharing knowledge. The output will be a transitional housing design and approach that can be widely used to reduce homelessness.

Project scope and expected outcomes

How will the Lab be conducted? 

This Solutions Lab will target young people that are at risk of, or experiencing homelessness. It will focus on youth aging out of foster care and will use a strategic foresight analysis method of innovation. Strategic foresight works by imagining possible future scenarios and analyzing the possible outcomes to find the best solution. The lab will be done in five phases:

1. Define the problem, create the working group, and develop the framework.
2. Research background information such as potential building sites and the best examples of existing transitional housing programs.
3. Develop potential solutions using an interactive design event where participants will reimagine housing and explore new ideas.
4. Prototype and test a promising building design and youth support services program.
5. Create a roadmap and host a symposium to teach other groups how to create better physical spaces.

The work will result in a transitional housing program model that will reduce homelessness.