A second, more publicly-accessible housing symposium will take place in Guelph next month.
It comes on the heels of a two-day January housing symposium held by county officials to address homelessness in Guelph and Wellington County, an event that left participants feeling optimistic.
The second follow-up symposium is planned for April 17.
January’s symposium was invite-only and media and the public were not allowed. April's event is is still invite-only, but media are welcome to attend the full day, and the morning portion will be live-streamed online, the county's Social Services Committee was told at a meeting Wednesday.
The April symposium will include a review of information gathered at the January symposium, including a progress update.
There will be presentations throughout the morning, including a keynote talk by professor Erin Dej on creating an effective system to address homelessness, a presentation by Kelly Goz from the City of Windsor on taking a whole of community and collaborative approach, and a panel discussion moderated by Wellington-Guelph Health and Housing. All of these will be live-streamed.
Afterwards, participants will engage in conversations around increasing and streamlining health services, building more social housing options, addressing homelessness, equitable rural services, identifying root causes, prevention strategies and more.
“That’s really difficult to live-stream, because it’s just going to be a lot of people talking,” social services administrator Luisa Artuso told GuelphToday.
According to a report presented by Artuso during Wednesday's Social Services Committee meeting, the idea is to include a larger number of participants to continue learning together and to explore and build upon the key objectives identified at the January symposium,” the report reads.
“Specifically, encampments, emergency shelters, data collection and sharing, public education, prevention, increase housing options, increase health options, provision of basic needs, and advocacy,” it reads.
The last symposium included around 100 elected officials, municipal staff, representatives from key service providers and people with current and past lived experience.
This time around there will be space for about 190 people.
“We’ve expanded the invite list to include more people that can actually speak to (the issues),” Artuso said.
For instance, she said one of the goals was to increase the options for social housing and deeply affordable housing, “so we’re asking the business sector to come in.”
“There’s also the need for data collection and data sharing, so we’ve invited data analysts in the community, because we want them to be able to contribute to the conversations.”
Those with current and past lived experience who attended the last symposium are invited to attend again as well, and Artuso said county officials will continue to consult on an ongoing basis.
Participants will also be solicited to become a sub working group, which she said will support the Wellington-Guelph Health and Housing Community Plan in creating a master plan.
While they plan to address more imminent needs after the symposium, the master plan will take a minimum of six months to develop.
“Somebody said to me, this will go at the speed of trust. And in order to do that master plan, it’s not going to be something that’s going to happen overnight,” she said.
