Equal Housing Initiative (EHI)
Is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Not-For-Profit Canadian Charity located at 554 Main Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
With a mandate to bring evidence based best practice, advocacy and practical support for the creation and sustainability of housing that is equal and equitable for all.
Guided by article 25 (1) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, EHI envisions a country where every Canadian enjoys adequate and equitable housing as part of a basic standard of living for the health and well-being of the individual.
EHI’s mandate is to advance systemic solutions and strengthening communities. Our work on housing includes shaping and sharing policy ideas, investing in innovative solutions, and supporting partners working to strengthen communities through the provision of:
Expertise To organizations working in the area of “Homeless Health” and Housing.
Advocacy For evidence based best practices in Homeless Health.
Practical Supports To assist organizations with projects that advance equal housing solutions.
Funding Partnerships To assist organizations with projects that advance equal housing solutions.
Service Coordination To support successful equal housing outcomes.
Sponsored Research To develop innovative solutions.
Equal Housing Initiative (EHI) believes Housing is a basic human right that everyone is entitled to, without discrimination. This right is important in ensuring affordable and accessible housing stock and most importantly, a housing environment that facilitates participation in community life and promotes physical, emotional and spiritual health.
In practice, however, the most marginalized of our society - those in absolute homelessness, poverty, living with mental illness/chronic addictions and other health issues, face numerous barriers in accessing this most basic human right.
Although steps have been taken towards the provision of housing — including efforts to accommodate disadvantaged individuals in housing policies — the most vulnerable continue to face significant challenges and barriers that limit the exercising of their human right to appropriate equitable and equal housing.
This raises questions relating to how equity and equality for all is accommodated in the provision of housing. It raises questions relating to the detrimental impact that inappropriate housing has on individuals, not just in terms of forcing them to move into substandard or institutional housing, but in terms of their other human rights.
For example, insecure and inappropriate housing can have serious detrimental impact on an individual’s right to health, particularly mental health.
- Equality -“Ensuring that every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents.” Equality means ensuring that everyone has the same opportunities and receives the same treatment and supports.
- Equity - “Giving more to those who need it” Equity is about giving people what they need through inclusion in decision making about their lives in order to make things fair with freedom to choose.
EHI Core Functions
Equal Housing Initiative operationalizes its mandate through six (6) core functions:
Filtering - Organizing and managing the most relevant and reliable information.
Amplifying - Taking new, little-known, or little-understood ideas, giving them weight, and making them more widely understood.
Investing - Offering a means to give projects the resources they need to carry out their main activities.
Convening - Bringing together different, distinct people or groups of people.
Community Building - Promoting and sustaining collective values and standards.
Learning and Facilitating - Helping members and projects carry out their activities more efficiently and effectively.
EHI governance and leadership are guided by the following principles:
Dedication - A commitment to the unwavering pursuit of equal and equitable solutions.
Innovation - Always exploring and transforming ideas into practical realities.
Excellence - With integrity, always aligning actions with values.
Evidence - Make decisions based on the best available evidence only if the evidence is consistently and systematically identified, evaluated and selected.
EHI Framework
Equal Housing Initiative is structured as a community of practice. A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
This definition reflects the fundamentally social nature of human learning. It is very broad. It applies to a street gang, whose members learn how to survive in a hostile world, as well as a group of engineers who learn how to design better devices or a group of community members (such as in the case of EHI) who seek to improve service to citizens.(5)
In all cases, the key EHI communities of practice elements are:
The Domain - Members are brought together by a learning need they share (whether this shared learning need is explicit or not and whether learning is the motivation for their coming together or a by-product of the initiative they share).
The Community - Members’ collective learning becomes a bond among them over time (experienced in various ways and thus not a source of homogeneity).
The Practice - Members’ interactions produce resources that affect a shared outcome (whether they engage in actual practice together or separately) that results in innovative outcomes and solutions to shared issues or a problem that might not be achieved separately. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.
Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope.
(5) https://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice/
How We Work
Key Values of the EHI Venture Philanthropy Approach (7)
While EHI decisions remain driven by its philanthropic mission and mandate, the venture philanthropy model provides a more rigorous focus on measuring and managing impact results (instead of focusing on the size of a grant or input-like indicators).
Because venture philanthropy is oriented towards optimizing impact through a collaborative approach, entities of varying sizes, sectors, expertise, etc. can all be a key part of an EHI venture philanthropy initiative.
This funding model enables EHI to bring together both financial and non-financial resources as well as co-investment partners optimizing social impact and best evidence outcomes.
The following are some of the common value elements - (although each element is not necessarily found in every venture philanthropy initiative EHI undertakes):
- Target systemic change through collaborative, strategic capital allocation.
- Long-term engagement with grantees and investees in alignment with a systems change mindset.
- Multi-stakeholder focus that promotes collaboration with key players within a sector.
- Blended investing approach that combines the use of grants and return-seeking investments.
- Focus on scaled interventions at a sector level, as opposed to single organizations.
- Agile evidence based research encouraging swift adaptation of interventions as needed based on outcomes.
Over the past decade or so, there has been a significant shift in philanthropy’s approach to addressing some of society’s biggest problems and the growing popularity of market-based or market-inspired solutions to these challenges.
At the same time, ideas like shared value, the notion of businesses favoring social good over a pure economic gain, or impact-investing have become more common.
This is due in part to declining funding from traditional sources, including traditional government funding, and donors’ growing demand for more impact from their charitable dollars.
Philanthropy and private equity used to be very distant worlds. Today, the idea of venture philanthropy has become more widespread. (8)
(7) https://www.sopact.com/venture-philanthropy
(8) https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/how venture philanthropy works and its role in effective charity
McLaren Hotel - Project Objectives
The McLaren Hotel Redevelopment Project will:
Realize the conversion of the McLaren Hotel to ‘3rd Stage Transitional Living’ in partnership with the Equal Housing Initiative, in addition to affordable housing at 550 Main Street.
Create a continuum of supports to encourage transition from SRO living to independent living in adjacent apartment building, while remaining a part of the McLaren community.
Introduce stability and supports to empower individuals with the objective of enabling employment and contribution to the economy.
Create affordable residential units in the Downtown, which is consistent with the City of Winnipeg’s Downtown First Agenda and Our Winnipeg’s call to foster continued Downtown renewal and residential growth.
Support Venture Philanthropy Partnerships, including Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation and Equal Housing Initiative.
Support thoughtful densification of the downtown by removing a gravel parking lot in the heart of Winnipeg’s Downtown.
Provide new revenues to the City of Winnipeg from a new Assessed Taxation Roll.
Provide approximately 5,000 square feet of new commercial retail space at a zero-lot line, fronting onto Main Street, creating an active storefront street scene on Main Street that will increase pedestrian activity and public safety.
Increase economic activity during construction, including induced, indirect and direct jobs creation, generating new economic activity and taxation for the City and Province.
Preserve heritage components of the McLaren Hotel while ensuring the overall sustainability of the existing SRO.
Increase energy efficiency at the McLaren through renovation.
Increased Downtown Renewal and Safety.