Peterborough Coordinated Access Review

We’re engaging people with lived experience, frontline workers, system managers, and other stakeholders in a frank and inclusive discussion about Peterborough’s homeless-serving system. What’s working? What’s not? How can we improve? 

The City of Peterborough is one of many communities across Canada that organizes its response to homelessness around an approach called Coordinated Access. 

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, which advocates for and consults on the implementation of these systems, describes Coordinated Access as “a community-wide system that streamlines the process for people experiencing homelessness to access housing and supports.” 

At the core of Coordinated Access is an effort to rationalize and optimize the distribution of scarce housing resources in a community. The model seeks to achieve this by standardizing the intake and assessment procedures used by local agencies and creating a real-time list of everyone who is experiencing homelessness at any time, as well as what their needs are. Then, individuals who are on the list can be matched to appropriate housing resources when they become available, and those assessed to have the greatest need can be prioritized above others.  

Coordinated Access systems are becoming the norm in Canada, especially now that the federal government has mandated them for all communities that receive federal homelessness funding.  

Peterborough first signed on to the Coordinated Access model in 2018. Since then, there has been no publicly accessible and independent evaluation of Peterborough’s system to assess how it’s working and how it might be improved. 

With funding from United Way Peterborough & District and the Government of Canada’s Reaching Home program, the RSCL is leading a community-wide discussion to review our local Coordinated Access system. What’s working? What’s not? And how can we do better? 

Our review is engaging people with lived experience, frontline workers, service managers, and other stakeholders to chart a path forward for Peterborough as we endeavour to meet our obligation to realize the right to housing locally. 

In 2023, we will begin sharing the results of our research in a variety of formats, including zines, a formal research report, and community convening sessions to bring everyone onto the same page. 

Project Findings and Resources