Client: City of Abbotsford

From 2022 to 2023, Urban Matters continued to deliver on our long-standing relationship with the City of Abbotsford by helping to create a renewed Homelessness Action Plan (HAP). The plan flags immediate actions and future strategies to be led or supported by the City to address the increasing homelessness in the area. This includes identifying opportunities to strengthen community-led services and programs and leveraging City-owned assets and resources. The process undertook significant engagement with local frontline service providers, stakeholder organizations, First Nations and Métis rightsholders, as well as individuals with lived and living experience of homelessness and housing insecurity. Focus groups and one-on-one interviews allowed Urban Matters to get a broad sense of intersecting barriers to dignified housing such as mental health and substance use, lack of affordable housing stock, and the strained municipal emergency response and social service landscape in Abbotsford.

Impact

The 2022 Homelessness Action Plan identified five high-level goals intended to support the vision of a City of Abbotsford where everyone has a home. Over the next 5-7 years, the City will initiate implementation of these goals, including developing new strategies for tracking and understanding progress on homelessness. Annual reporting of this process will be an opportunity to review the impact of the Homelessness Action Plan and the Affordable Housing Strategy together, with an emphasis on prevention.