Thank you, Alana.
I have a couple of other things that I would like to mention.
We have left with you a really great report that we have just completed in Hamilton. It's called a “social audit”. It's an opportunity we had to have 29 people with first-voice experience tell their stories to people who were deep listeners and influencers from our community, such as the Catholic bishop of Hamilton, the president of nursing at St. Joseph's Healthcare, and the head of journalism at Mohawk College. These are people who have an opportunity to listen to these stories and to do something with them in a different way. Through that opportunity, we have some very strong recommendations that I think you will appreciate, upon reflection.
One of the key things we noted, of course, was the connection between poverty and mental health. One of the recommendations was to significantly increase the investment in affordable housing with supports for people living with mental health, intellectual disabilities, and addiction and concurrent disorders. One of those examples I want to leave you with today is that of the choir we started in January. It's called “Singin' Women”. It is a choir for women at risk of or experiencing homelessness. It is essential that you apply a gender lens to this conversation. In doing so, we recognize the need for really essential supports like this.
Alana's mother and I will sing in the alto section tonight for our debut at a downtown venue in Hamilton. We're going to sing three songs. This choir is filled with about 15 women with the lived experience of homelessness who are still currently at very high risk of that and are finding life, passion, peace, and empowerment by sharing their voices in that choir. That is the kind of innovative support that I think can make huge differences, but that is not the place to land. What really needs to happen, of course, is adequate, affordable housing, and again, with the supports that are needed to obtain that.
Again, finally, I would ask you to take a look at HPS, your homelessness partnering strategy. Under that, I'm engaged as the coordinator of the Women's Housing Planning Collaborative in Hamilton. I think every community across the country needs to have a coordinator of women's homelessness that can put that gender lens on, because under the new directives of HPS, the women's homelessness system has been destabilized in a couple of ways in Hamilton. Because of the definitions, women don't often meet the specific criteria for “chronically or episodically homeless”. Therefore, housing first is leaving many of our women behind. I urge you to take a look at that as something concrete.
We have many more places that we could chat about later, but maybe we'll save that for some questions.
Thank you so much for your time.