The challenges faced by these people, the majority of whom wait years before finding a suitable dwelling, prompted her to launch a community-based research project to create an interactive dashboard that would help municipalities make data-driven decisions to improve social and affordable housing services and policies.
The result is a prototype dashboard called DASH (Decisions for Affordable/Social Housing). The aim of this open system is to draw on data from a variety of sources to provide an overall picture of social housing needs, the number of waitlisted persons and the number of units available in a given community. One objective is to eliminate data duplication between social housing wait lists and homeless shelter registrations, so as to have a more precise estimate of households in need, and thus to assist housing planning decision makers.
“The government gives billions of dollars to build housing,” says Sauvé-Schenk. “But does it know what, how many and where to build? Decisions are based on limited, fragmented data. DASH would enable stakeholders to make more informed decisions.”
A fruitful partnership with the community
The prototype dashboard has been developed over three years by an interdisciplinary research team at the University of Ottawa in partnership with the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, a coalition of more than 75 organizations working to end homelessness in the National Capital Region. Professors Daniel Amyot (Faculty of Engineering), Lysanne Lessard (Telfer School of Management) and John Sylvestre (Faculty of Social Sciences) joined Sauvé-Schenk to pool their knowledge of software engineering, information systems, housing and homelessness, and health.
The project is guided by an advisory committee made up of municipal and federal representatives, housing administrators and organizations, and a dedicated expert steering team from the Alliance made up of people with lived experience of homelessness. The project has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The research team and the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa were recently awarded an honorary mention in the Excellence Awards bestowed by Community-Based Research Canada, a national network that promotes community-based research. The recognition highlights a highly fruitful community-university collaboration, says Sauvé-Schenk.
“The Alliance is committed to doing research with us. It’s about sharing expertise and knowledge. It’s truly a 50/50 project with the community.”
A national vision
The partners are presently working with the community and people with lived experience of homelessness to better understand how the collection of data on affordable housing could be improved, while ensuring a balance between public data sharing and the right to privacy.
Although the prototype was designed for use at the municipal level, DASH has the potential to provide a broad perspective on current and future housing needs across the country, says Sauvé-Schenk. This data solution promises to guide the collective response to the housing crisis currently affecting over 20% of Canadian households, who live in unaffordable housing.