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The seeds of this study were sowed by a group of executive directors from community-based organizations (CBOs), both Indigenous and non-Indigenous agencies, in Winnipeg’s inner city who raised concerns about the systemic barriers impeding their work to address homelessness. Further, they believed government policies and programs designed to address homelessness —like 10-year plans to end homelessness — require greater scrutiny. This research exposed longstanding tensions within the CBO homeless-serving sector, while the flaws of CI as a model to address complex social issues became apparent. This catalyzed deeper examination of a sector trying to implement a model that was imposed on it without the due diligence of examining evidence and scholarship for its efficacy.
The research has led to imperative questions explored in this study:
• How does a significantly under-resourced and underestimated community sector with a vast wealth of expertise work collectively toward a complex social mandate under conditions of intense mistrust, inflamed politics, and colonial systems?
• How have neoliberal policies and ideology pushed community work into a futile tug-of-war between competition and collaboration?
• How can these learnings be more broadly applied to assess the limitations of community development approaches before they are applied to transformative policy change?
Grant: Community-Driven Solutions to Poverty: Challenges and Possibilities - 2020-2027
Category: Housing and Neighbourhood Revitalization