A Way Home Canada launched in late 2015 with a bold mandate: to prevent and end youth homelessness in Canada. This vision emerged from the shared determination of a strong and diverse group of founding members* who knew that youth homelessness needed to be on the national agenda. That vision has guided us every day since.
Today, we celebrate not only our achievements but the collective leadership and collaboration that made them possible. And as we look to the future, we remain as committed as ever to building a Canada where no young person ever experiences homelessness.
How Far We’ve Come
Our journey began with a shared belief that ending youth homelessness is imperative. At the time, the landscape of homelessness in Canada was dominated by emergency responses like shelters, crisis services, and short-term fixes that, while essential, could not address the root causes that push young people into homelessness in the first place.
We knew we needed to do things differently. We embraced a proactive, rights-based approach that focused on prevention, early intervention, and sustainable pathways out of homelessness. This direction required, and continues to require, deep collaboration across sectors. From educators and child welfare agencies to police, landlords, public health leaders, and the business community, we invited “unusual suspects” to join us in creating systemic change. This wasn’t just a strategy; it became a movement grounded in shared responsibility.
One of our early contributions to this shift was the creation of Youth Rights! Right Now! Ending Youth Homelessness: A Human Rights Guide, developed in collaboration with partners across Canada and Europe and informed by youth, researchers, and the expertise of the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Leilani Farha. Bringing human rights to the forefront helped solidify the philosophical and legal foundation of our work while affirming that youth homelessness is not inevitable, but a preventable violation of young people’s rights.
Building the Evidence Base to Transform Policy and Practice
With the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH), we launched Without a Home in 2016, the largest pan-Canadian study of youth homelessness ever conducted. The study gave communities the data and language they needed to push for change at local, provincial, and federal levels. Many partners have shared that this single publication transformed the way their organizations, funders, and elected officials understood youth homelessness.
Around the same time, we advocated for the inclusion of questions about the age of first homelessness in national Point-in-Time Count surveys. When the data revealed that 50% of people who experience homelessness first do so before the age of 25, it shifted the national conversation. It provided the evidence communities needed to understand youth homelessness as a distinct, urgent issue, and to advocate for youth-specific solutions.
Prevention in a Time of Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to young people across Canada. Isolation, school closures, job losses, and disruptions to services compounded existing inequities and risked pushing even more youth into homelessness. In those early days of uncertainty, we mobilized quickly.
We worked with government partners across jurisdictions to apply a youth homelessness prevention lens to emergency responses. We supported service providers to adapt rapidly, shared real-time evidence and guidance, and amplified the voices of young people whose needs were too often overlooked in broader pandemic planning. Many communities used our prevention frameworks, rooted in rights-based practice, family and natural supports, and early intervention, to redesign their approaches on the ground.
The crisis underscored what we had long advocated: that prevention must be built into every system, especially in moments of upheaval. COVID-19 tested our collective resilience, but it also demonstrated the power and necessity of prevention-focused strategies.
Innovating Solutions through Making the Shift
We know evidence alone is not enough; we need to see it in action. A cornerstone of our first decade has been the Making the Shift (MtS) Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab, co-led with the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. With a generous grant from the Government of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence program, MtS played a central role in advancing and testing real-world solutions rooted in research and guided by the voices of young people.
Through Making the Shift, we advanced interventions such as Upstream Canada and Reconnect, which support schools to identify and assist students at risk before a crisis occurs; Family and Natural Supports, which helps young people maintain or rebuild relationships with caring adults; and Housing First for Youth, adapted from the adult model to reflect the developmental realities young people face.
In 2021, Making the Shift was recognized as a Geneva UN Charter Centre of Excellence, an honour that reflected both the strength of the work and its global relevance.
Supporting Communities to Transform Practice
As the movement for prevention grew, so did the demand for practical tools, coaching, and capacity-building. In response, we are in the process of expanding our Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) to support communities, organizations, and systems seeking to embed prevention in their work.
Through tailored training, implementation support, coaching, and shared resources, this work has strengthened local capacity, supported system redesign rooted in evidence and human rights, guided communities through the implementation of prevention frameworks, and equipped practitioners with the confidence to change practice.
Our training efforts have become an essential bridge between research and practice, ensuring that communities are not only inspired by prevention but supported to do the hard, long-term work of transforming systems.
A Growing International Movement
Over the past decade, A Way Home has grown into an international movement, inspiring A Way Home coalitions not just in Canada but also in the United States, across Europe, and in Australia. Together, we have shaped policy conversations, influenced international frameworks, and developed tools that reach far beyond our borders.
This global momentum was on full display at the first International Conference on the Prevention of Youth Homelessness in Toronto in early 2025. Experts with lived experience, academics, policymakers, and community leaders from around the world gathered to share strategies, lessons, and a collective belief in what is possible. It was a moment that crystallized just how far this work has come—and how deeply this movement is shared.
Looking Forward with Hope and Determination
As we look to the next decade, we carry with us the achievements that have defined our first ten years. None of this has been possible without the unwavering dedication of our partners, funders, community leaders, and staff—people who show up every day because they know that young people deserve systems that work, communities that care, and a country that refuses to leave anyone behind.
Most importantly, we owe our deepest gratitude to the young people with lived experience. Their voices are not just integral to our work; they are our moral compass.
Our forthcoming strategic plan will guide the next phase of A Way Home Canada’s growth. The plan focuses on mobilizing knowledge from Making the Shift, strengthening public policy and capacity-building efforts, and transitioning the organization from a successful start-up to a mature, high-impact entity.
I hope you will join us as we continue to push boundaries, challenge systems, and create a future in which young people can thrive.
* Founding members: Eva’s Initiatives, the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness, the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, Raising the Roof, the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, the Canadian Housing & Renewal Association, Egale Human Rights Trust, the Government of Alberta, and the A Way Home Funders Table co-led with the Catherine Donnelly Foundation.