Health, Housing and Income

Explore the Health, Housing and Income (H2I) project, a program aimed at preventing homelessness among discharged hospital patients, with a focus on medical and psychiatric patients. This project developed a collaborative model between hospitals and community agencies and created an Implementation Guide that can be used by other similar programs in communities across Canada. Key strategies to success included embedding community partners in hospitals, establishing information sharing systems and creating advisory committees with diverse representation.

Read the program implementation guide

Read the final report

Project scope and expected outcomes

Collaboration results in action

People facing homelessness have a higher risk of early death, mental illness and traumatic injury. They often depend on hospitals for healthcare and end up spending more time in the hospital than the non-homeless population. When they leave the hospital, they’re at a higher risk of becoming homeless again.

In London, Ontario, an intervention, the H2I program, aimed to address this cycle by integrating community agency staff into hospital units to assist hospitalized people experiencing homelessness secure housing and financial support and provide transitional support post-discharge. Targeting at-risk youth (16-25) and adults (18-85), the program had significant success.

The research team found that:

• Most of the adult sample (80%) and the youth sample (71.4%) experienced homelessness at least once in their lifetime.
• 89% of adult participants and all youth participants reported having a psychiatric hospitalization.
• The average number of total psychiatric hospitalizations was 5 times for adults and 2 times for youth in the last year.

The program connected people to the support and services they needed as well as long-term community supports. Healthcare providers and community stakeholders found the program effective in preventing people leaving the hospital from becoming homeless. A key part of making the program work was evaluating community resources, client needs and communication channels.

The coordinated and collaborative approach of H2I was crucial to the program’s success, allowing 138 people to access supports and services. All people were connected to long-term community support and accessed housing.

Spreading the word

The researchers developed an Implementation Guide to help other similar homelessness prevention programs within hospitals and communities.

Important features of the programming that can be adopted by other communities include:

• Having community agency partners on-site in hospitals.
• Using a “Homeless Individuals and Families Information System” to ensure connection and information-sharing between agencies.
• Including various agencies and people with lived experience in advisory committees.
• Offering healthcare staff easily accessible program information in case of staff turnover.
• Identifying specific needs of sub-populations such as youth.

The project also recommends that similar homelessness prevention programs should be started in other communities across Canada. These would benefit from improved collaboration between community agencies and hospitals – like sharing a common database for better collaboration. Also, building relationships with landlords can help ensure there is enough suitable housing available for program participants.

Read the program implementation guide

Read the final report