For over 2 years now Justice for Girls has been working on a housing strategy to help create housing options for girls who are homeless and to prevent girl homelessness.

Our main objective has been to build an informed strategy, led by young women who have experienced poverty, on how girl homelessness can be prevented and what housing options need to be available to girls who are inadequately housed/homeless. Through gathering information about girl homelessness from girls themselves and from activists and support persons who work with marginalized girls and women, we have been drafting the housing strategy.

The main focus of our work this year has been to more clearly define, through our interviews with girls and activists, and through reviewing research and gathering information, what a housing strategy for girls at risk of homelessness should look like.  We have always believed that solutions to girl homelessness must involve prevention of violence against girls, treatment for addictions, and access to education and human rights.  We are hoping that the housing strategy we write, by describing everything that has to come together for girls to truly be safe and housed decently, can affect people’s understanding of girl homelessness beyond the idea that a room alone is enough to stop girl homelessness.

In October 2005 we took statements on experiences of homelessness and inadequate housing from 17 young women from across Canada, to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing in Washington, DC.  We also submitted a report on girl homelessness in Canada to the Rapporteur.  The Rapporteur issued a final report on Women, Housing, and Land in February of 2006 in which he stated that girl homelessness is a national issue in Canada and that homeless girls are a group that is particularly marginalized.