London Cares has unveiled a new campaign intending to help people spread awareness of homelessness, as well as ensuring that they are not spreading misinformation.
In an official media release, London Cares states that the purpose of this campaign, called Housing First, Hope Always, is to “… strengthen understanding of London Cares’ role, expertise and Housing First approach.”
“It’s hard to find housing these days, especially at an affordable rate,” said Chris Moss, the executive director of London Cares homeless response services. “Every single month, my team finds between 30 and 50 people who are new to homelessness,”
Homelessness has been rising all across Ontario, with the number of homeless people in the province being estimated to have risen to 80,000 people.
Moss hopes that this campaign will help combat the common myths about homelessness, as well as bringing to attention just how serious the issue has gotten, and what London Cares is trying to do. “It was really noticing the narrative getting off track, and feeling like when we’re out in the community, that people are misunderstanding who we are,” said Moss. “We needed to really get out in front of that message and share as much as we could.”
“Some of the misinformation comes where we hear rumours, like we give out drugs to people, we enable homelessness, we keep them in homelessness, so that we can make a lot of money,” clarified Moss. “As a housing first agency, we actually really want to move people from street to home as fast as possible.”
Moss says that due to budget cuts and lack of spending for the homeless, this campaign is also to remind the public and themselves that they have not lost hope. “The province has not made enough housing, not enough affordable housing, not enough supportive housing, not enough housing that includes treatment beds or other types of things,” said Moss. We really need to call on the province to invest heavily in that.”
“We recently had our funding reduced, eliminated with House of Hope,” Moss added. “We had 45 people housed, and that program was defunded. … This is sort of a little bit of a spinoff from that to saying we’re not losing track of hope.”
“But as a community, I’m pretty sure we could come together and get creative.”
