When Trent graduate Dr. Naomi Nichols accepted the opportunity to lead a research program through her position as Canada Research Chair in Community-Partnered Social Justice, it was a homecoming of sorts. This journey would bring her back to Peterborough, the community where she grew up, and pursued her undergraduate studies. It was also a community in dire need of solutions to very challenging social problems – a growing opioid crisis, a lack of shelter spaces to house those experiencing homelessness, and poverty becoming visible to people who hadn’t previously realized it was there.
Through her position as Canada Research Chair, Professor Nichols launched the Research for Social Change Lab. The idea was to engage community groups and invite collaboration to tackle the challenges facing Peterborough. It is these collaborations that are providing a glimmer of hope for future solutions to address the need to house all residents.
“I have been overwhelmed by the generosity and creativity of the organizations with whom we have been working since we got the lab up and running in 2021. From big institutions to small grassroots organizations, I’ve encountered an unprecedented desire to collaborate, to strategize, to share resources, and exchange ideas. There seems to be a shared understanding of the profound health and social inequities facing our community, which fuels a desire for collective work. Working together reminds us that we are not powerless; in this way, we can actively push for a more just future for our community.”
Peterborough’s homelessness crisis reached a breaking point, and the Research for Social Change Lab was among the eight community partners that received funding from United Way Peterborough & District to tackle critical homelessness issues from every angle. Prof. Nichols and her lab are supporting the Reaching Home project by investigating how the homeless-serving system works and for whom in Peterborough. The research focused specifically on Coordinated Access, which is the data-driven process that the Government of Canada requires all municipalities to employ to address homelessness. The research illuminates some of the challenges associated with the implementation of this approach. The results of the research also explain why some people are choosing to sleep outside in tents, rather than use local shelters; the problems with homeless encampment evictions and the displacement of those who live there; and the importance of working with people who use drugs to develop effective harm reduction strategies for people experiencing homelessness.
This local project is part of a broader program of work carried out by Nichols and the Research for Social Change Lab about data practices and digitization across the public sphere. As Nichols notes, “In looking across the multiple sites of our research, from child welfare to homelessness, one finds people working very hard to engage in government-mandated data practices that do not improve the quality or efficacy of their work to address social problems like poverty, racism, violence, food insecurity, poor health, or homelessness. All the while, they continue to scramble to address the acute crises faced by clients living in circumstances of increasing resource scarcity.”
Nichols hopes the work of the lab can challenge common sense assumptions about how to improve public systems by making the workings of these systems more transparent and revealing some of the ways they fall short of their promises.
