This began during my Ph.D. research, when I was looking at geographies of homelessness, in the Northwest Territories in particular. I have found, from people I was interviewing and collaborating with, who had lived experience of homelessness, that oftentimes their journeys through homelessness had actually been framed by efforts to attain or maintain a sense of home in moving from a smaller community to an urban centre, whether it was to follow children who had been apprehended by the state, for example, and placed in foster care, or whether it was to be with chosen kin, to be together with friends who were also living in shelter environments.
The significance of those connections with friends and family being very profound was something I felt was an opportunity to look at journeys through homelessness as also journeys towards home, and how those efforts to find, build and sustain home could actually be incorporated into the kinds of programs and services we offer, such as providing long-term housing support, ideally, for parents whose children are in care and providing spaces for them to be able to visit with their children.
The way the housing system is set up currently, if your children are apprehended, you are evicted from your housing, and without housing you can't regain custody of your children. It's this horrible catch-22 and cycle that parents find themselves in. Effectively, they become cut off from access to maintaining long-term meaningful connections with their children.