Research Brief: How Quebec’s schools can become sites of homelessness prevention
From 2018 to 2020, the RSCL’s Youth Action Research Revolution (YARR) researched how Quebec’s public institutions — from hospitals to schools to prisons — were implicated in the province’s housing and homelessness crisis, especially for youth.
Of all these institutions, schools emerged as particularly important for understanding the drivers of youth homelessness. YARR interviewed over three-dozen young people in Montreal, and all but one of them named their educational careers as a key part of their struggles with housing precarity.
Given the near-universality of engagement with the education system (every young person must attend), this presents an opportunity: Schools should be reimagined as sites of homelessness prevention.
We produced a research brief to summarize YARR’s findings related to education.