Stephen, Christopher M
Supportive Housing: A key Ingridient in the Safety and Well-being of Thriving Communities [poster]
Supportive Housing: A key Ingridient in the Safety and Well-being of Thriving Communities
The Peterborough Police have a great interest in social programs through their mandate of community policing through a harm reduction model, which means understanding and aiding where they are able in social programs such as supportive housing. The purpose of this project was to determine the scope, amount and level of need of supportive housing in Peterborough and the surrounding areas, and then to compare these needs and models to other communities to begin the development of best practices that could be implemented in Peterborough. In these comparisons, it was essential to determine the cost of these programs, and if they effectively reduced costs and stresses on public emergency services. Major positive findings of this study indicate that supportive housing is a reliable method for the development and support of at-risk populations. While there is a lack of supportive housing for specific high risk individuals in the Peterborough area, the framework for continued and improved support does exist. Finally, supportive housing has been shown to drastically reduce the cost and stresses that high risk individuals who would greatly benefit from support, put on public emergency services, including hospital visits, emergency shelter use and 911 calls.