Building a Collaborative Advantage

This comparison of how three major Canadian cities have approached homelessness reveals that successful policy must be built on inclusive, collaborative decision making.

This comparison of three major Canadian cities over a twenty-year period draws on network governance theory to show that effective homelessness policy must be built on inclusive, collaborative decision making that includes policy makers and civil-society actors.

Homelessness is not a historical accident. We know that it is the disastrous outcome of policy decisions made over time and at several levels of government. Yet conventional theories in political science and public administration fail to explain why some approaches work while others fail.

In Building a Collaborative Advantage, Carey Doberstein draws on network governance theory, extended participant observation, and more than sixty interviews with key policy figures to investigate how government and civil-society actors in three major Canadian cities have organized themselves to solve public problems. In Vancouver and Calgary, where governance networks include affordable-housing providers, mental-health professionals, Aboriginal community members, representatives of drop-in centres, and others with lived experience, homelessness is on the decline. In Toronto, where municipal decision making was closed to civil-society actors during the period of investigation, homelessness levels remained stagnant.

Doberstein concludes that having a progressive city council is not enough. Civil-society organizations and actors must have genuine access to the channels of government power in order to work with policy makers to develop innovative and comprehensive solutions.