Reaching Home is a federal funding program aimed at preventing and reducing homelessness across Canada. This program provides funding to urban, Indigenous, rural and remote communities to help them address their local homelessness needs. Reaching Home supports the goals of the National Housing Strategy to support the most vulnerable Canadians in maintaining safe, stable and affordable housing and to reduce chronic homelessness nationally by 50% by fiscal year 2027/2028.
The program is community- based, which means that recommendations about allocating funds are taken by the community. Each Reaching Home community has a Community Entity (CE), which administers the funding, and a Community Advisory Board (CAB), which is a committee formed of community representatives. The CAB is where the community speaks to recommendations about process and about funding. Regular meetings of the CE and CAB take place every month, and special meetings, sub-committee meetings and workshops take place as needed.
The Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition became CE for the Yukon in April of 2020. The Coalition is purposefully engaged in helping create a CAB that represents the many parts of Yukon’s varied community with a goal of centring voices of people with lived or living experience and indigenous leadership. The CAB is an evolving entity. Let us know if your organisation could play a role on it. We will explain CAB member responsibilities to you and let you know how to go about joining the committee.