Prevention Framework

If we want to address homelessness through prevention, we need to be clear on exactly what we mean. What are the system changes and structural shifts that reduce the likelihood that someone will become homeless? What are the intervention strategies that can support people who are at high risk of homelessness or who have recently become homeless? How can we ensure that people who have been homeless—and who are now housed—do not experience homelessness again?

A New Direction: A Framework for Homelessness Prevention sets out to define what we mean by “homelessness prevention,” developing a common language and laying the groundwork for policy and practice shifts that will reduce the likelihood that individuals will experience homelessness.
The homelessness prevention framework is rooted in a human rights perspective that argues that all people have the right to housing that is safe, appropriate, affordable, and sustainable, and that allowing people to fall into, and remain, homeless because of structural, systemic, and/or individual factors is not acceptable. No one should have to demonstrate that they are worthy of, or “ready” for, housing.

Adapting the Public Health Model

Homelessness prevention adapts the public health model of prevention, which has been used since the 1940s to reduce the risk and harms associated with illnesses. The public health model provides a range of prevention interventions that should take place simultaneously; these are known as primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention.

Primary Prevention

This refers to structural-level initiatives that apply to everyone with the goal of reducing the risk of homelessness and building protective factors. From a health perspective, primary prevention includes immunization programs or anti-smoking campaigns. The framework breaks down primary prevention further to describe an array of strategies that impact the population at large:

1. Universal prevention — policies and interventions that target the broad public. While these strategies do not always have homelessness prevention as their goal, they have the effect of reducing the risks of becoming homeless by creating greater equality, which is vital to homelessness prevention. Examples include an adequate supply of affordable housing and poverty reduction strategies, such as greater access to affordable childcare.
2. Selected prevention — prevention efforts aimed at members of a particular group, such as school-based programs and anti-oppression strategies for individuals facing discrimination, in particular Indigenous Peoples. It also includes programs aimed at low-income people, such as the basic income program that was piloted in Ontario.
3. Indicated prevention — applies to all those who are disadvantaged to ensure they do not become homeless in the first place. Examples of indicated prevention include support for families experiencing violence and individuals facing mental health and addictions challenges.

Secondary Prevention

Secondary prevention refers to intervention strategies aimed at those who are at imminent risk of homelessness (i.e., received an eviction notice) as well as those who have recently become homeless. The goal is to avoid homelessness or to move people out of homelessness as quickly as possible. Secondary prevention includes a range of options, including emergency financial assistance, family mediation, and domestic violence victim support.

Tertiary Prevention

Prevention initiatives that support individuals and families who have previously experienced homelessness to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. The Housing First model is a type of tertiary prevention by providing chronically homeless individuals with housing and supports to maintain housing stability.

These three classes of prevention activities exist along a continuum. In order to effectively prevent homelessness, all three forms of prevention must occur simultaneously. Most of the prevention programs that exist in Canada and internationally fall into the secondary prevention category. While these interventions are crucial to support those in crisis, secondary interventions alone cannot prevent homelessness. Structural and systemic interventions that work at the level of primary prevention are needed to provide the policy, practice, and funding backbone for individual interventions to be successful.

For more information on different types of prevention interventions, see our Typology of Homelessness Prevention.