Social Work Week in BC is March 9-15, 2025. It’s a time to celebrate the accomplishments of social workers and highlight their essential contribution to the health and wellbeing of British Columbians. To mark the week, we’re profiling one social work-led program at Providence Health Care that’s helping people obtain safe, secure housing.
When people experience significant changes in their health, their ability to retain their housing can be threatened. Changes in their health and function can affect their ability to maintain the same level of income. It can also impact their ability to physically carry out the tasks required to maintain their home environment.
Reduction in income and unexpected costs related to health can be enough to threaten housing stability for many individuals in Metro Vancouver, which has one of the toughest rental markets in Canada.
To help address this reality, Providence recently launched a two-year pilot project that aims to help people keep their current home or find new housing. Reaching Home is a federally funded program designed to prevent and reduce homelessness across Canada. It’s community-based and administered locally by the Vancity Community Foundation and Lu’ma Native Housing Society.
Short-term financial aid helps people regain independence
Social Worker Jesse Hilburt is leading the Reaching Home project at Providence. Available to precariously housed or unhoused individuals who have sought care at Providence, the program assists with both case management and financial aid.
The financial aspect, Hilburt explains, “is meant as a temporary intervention to stabilize someone’s housing situation, or to help them obtain and secure new housing.” That might involve working with landlords to settle rental arrears, paying a damage deposit, or covering the first month’s rent. That short-term aid allows people to increase their savings and regain financial independence so they can take over the expenses.
Hilburt works with social workers at Providence to identify eligible clients and guide the process. Since October 2024, about 75 people have been referred to Reaching Home – and Hilburt is already hearing success stories.
One happy case involved a young Indigenous man who had been sleeping on his grandparents’ couch for three years. His disability benefit and part-time earnings combined weren’t enough for him to move out on his own, and he didn’t have savings to fall back on. Providence social workers met with him to determine his budget and apply to housing. They helped him find a suite near his grandparents’ place. Reaching Home covered the damage deposit, first month’s rent, and helped with furnishings.
“With that assistance, it allows him to save a bit more money and not worry about the stresses that come with having limited finances and needing to pay rent,” Hilburt says.
Program helps ‘soothe stresses’ around housing precarity
Reaching Home supports the goals of the National Housing Strategy which recognizes that safe and affordable housing is at the heart of every strong community. The Providence-led program is one of 70- plus Reaching Home projects in the Greater Vancouver region. Providence is the only health authority to receive this federal funding.
The link between housing precarity or being unhoused and a person’s health is well known. Through the Reaching Home program, Providence is not just supporting people in retaining or obtaining housing, but also addressing the social determinants of health that contribute to a person requiring health care interventions.
“More and more people are quite vulnerable to losing housing unexpectedly or through a single life event,” Hilburt says. “Reaching Home helps soothe those stresses and also provides the intervention that allows people to maintain or obtain safe, secure housing so they can carry on with their lives.”
