Homelessness: We have all the answers!

 

Helping the homeless - We have the tools to help
Photo Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

by Larry Leach

A quote recently hit me — something I’d been feeling for a long time. Malcolm Gladwell put it perfectly:


“The tools necessary to control an epidemic are sitting on the table, right in front of us. We can let the unscrupulous take them. Or we can pick them up ourselves and use them to build a better world.”

That’s exactly where we are with CPTED, SafeGrowth, and the broader crisis in our cities.

We have blogged on the topic of homelessness numerous times including Greg’s blog about the state of homelessness in 2024, Mateja’s blog on homelessness in a European city, and also in Australia, and Jon Munn's blog on the situation in Victoria, BC.

We already have the tools. We already know what works. Finland has proven it and last year we blogged on that country’s remarkable success.

Other countries have also been successful. The problem isn’t strategy — it’s will. What we face is not a lack of evidence, but a kind of Titanic denial — a refusal to accept who must act, and a reluctance to work together toward the solutions already in front of us.

The table is set. The only question now is: Who’s going to reach for the tools?

CANADA AND THE U.S.

In Canada alone, there are hundreds of Millions of dollars going to large agencies in the major cities and that can lead to different motives and outcomes with no one level of government or organization directly responsible or accountable for the outcomes. 

In fact many of these agencies, including shelters, detox, recovery communities, supervised consumption sites and housing get funding from civic, provincial and federal governments at the same time. Some agencies are involved in a number of these activities.

As we say in SafeGrowth, the experts are the people that live in the community. The closer decisions and actions are to the people in the community the better the solution will be for the residents.

U.S. homeless patterns - source: U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development 

 

Canadian homeless patterns - source Housing Infrastructure Canada

The trends show an inconsistency in addressing the problem. If we manage social issues, they will continue to manage us.  The rhetoric in the early 2000’s in Canada was “the plan to end homelessness” in every major city with goals and target dates. 

An example of this was Calgary’s plan to end homelessness in 2008. It was a 10 year plan. Calgary’s was the first to get to the 10 year mark and there are some learnings that can be found in detail here. 

WE KNOW THE ANSWERS 

We Already Know the Answers — So Why Aren’t We Acting?

Seven key barriers to ending homelessness were identified in 2018 — and in 2025, nothing has changed. These barriers include: lack of affordable housing, poor coordination, overreliance on short-term fixes, economic downturns, funding gaps, rising newcomer populations, and weak data systems.

Not one level of government has taken direct responsibility for addressing them, and progress remains glacial. Any attempts to move forward are, as the saying goes, a day late and a dollar short.

But the solutions already exist — and Finland has shown the world how.

I had the chance to visit Finland and meet Juha Kahila, head of international affairs for Y-Säätiö, the country’s largest non-profit landlord. Juha regularly speaks in Canada, sharing insights with governments and agencies.

Y-Säätiö - Finland's 4th largest landlord committed to the Housing First program 

Finland is clearly different from Canada or the U.S., but some of their most effective policies could be adapted here — if we had the political will.

Most importantly: Finland made municipalities fully responsible for outreach, housing, and support services — not through grants, but by directly employing everyone involved. These same municipalities also manage healthcare, with outreach teams embedded in health clinics. Homelessness, addiction, and mental health are treated as connected health issues.

Finland shelter for homeless

The results? Helsinki reduced its shelter beds from 6,000 to just 600 — not by building massive new facilities, but by transitioning people into housing. When I toured one of their low-barrier shelters, I saw modest rooms with no more than 12 beds each, and upper floors dedicated to transitional housing for men, women, and couples.

Small-scale shelter spaces. Integrated mental health support. Full municipal accountability.

THE WAY FORWARD

By no means are these the only changes that need to happen, but the two simple ideas of making one level of government fully responsible for the sector and making it closer to healthcare can make a HUGE impact of the seven reasons the Calgary Plan to end Homelessness didn’t achieve its intended outcome. 

Making our shelter spaces smaller and turning some of the spaces into housing addresses the remaining factors that made the initiative fail.

By addressing these changes, we’ll know who is responsible to address the issue and make the necessary changes and our communities will be safer and more connected and can spend more time working on social cohesion rather than trying to address the social disorder that impacts many residents in many communities. 

With no one in charge, we will continue to suffer a patchwork of well-meaning agencies and small volunteer groups trying as best they can, with little to no coordination.

It’s not complex. We already know what works.


The only thing missing is action.

Beyond the basics: How SafeGrowth and Third-Generation CPTED reimagine community safety

 

The 2025 CPTED conference and SafeGrowth Summit in 

Palm Springs, California

by Mateja Mihinjac

Last month, we held our 2025 ICA International CPTED Conference in Palm Springs

alongside a SafeGrowth Summit with our global network.

Our conference theme — Community Building and Empowerment: A Holistic CPTED Approach — framed much of the discussion. As Greg Saville and I prepared our conference session months earlier, we identified three essential criteria for CPTED to be truly holistic:

• It must be proactive
• It must be integrative
• It must be grounded in community building.

Both SafeGrowth and Third-Generation CPTED meet these benchmarks — and our session explored exactly how.

Expanding on the latest developments in Third-Generation CPTED at the
2025 ICA CPTED Conference

PROACTIVE 

A proactive approach means tackling the root causes of crime before it happens. CPTED exemplifies this by using strategies that both reduce opportunities for offending and encourage local communities to take an active role in prevention — dissuading potential offenders while reinforcing pro-social behavior.

Thinking proactively about crime problems is powerful because it relies on anticipating the problem by taking proven measures to prevent it in the first place.

INTEGRATIVE

I’ve written about reductionist approaches to understanding and responding to crime in a blog a few years ago.

In that blog, I claimed that crime prevention professionals and researchers need to approach the problem by working together in an integrated way to fit solutions to the context, economy and politics of each neighbourhood. We can achieve this by thinking pragmatically about the problem(s) and integrating physical, social and psychological approaches to the extent each of them is required to respond not only to symptoms of the problem but to also address the underlying reasons that have culminated in the crime problem(s).

Trees, forests, hillsides, meadows, mountains - the bio-physical world integrates ecosystems naturally. The social world needs theories that do the same. 

This element is vital to holistic crime prevention because it brings together different perspectives to better understand the problem — and to craft the most effective, tailored solutions.

BASED ON COMMUNITY-BUILDING

People from communities that are cared for, care for each other. This is why investing in neighbourhood communities – both financially and through building social capital – pays major dividends in the long run. This is nicely demonstrated in Larry Leach’s blog in which he writes about the importance of strong bonds between the residents to help address addiction, a major issue that affects many neighbourhoods and may manifest in an overflow of drug-related crimes.

Community building that is both engaging and empowering is therefore a key element of holistic crime prevention because it ensures that those most affected by the problems in their neighbourhood get empowered to play an active partnership role in addressing those problems.

How well do CPTED and SafeGrowth satisfy these criteria? 

Conference participants worked on designing CPTED elements 
into a local park during site visits

CPTED

Greg and I conceptualised the theory of Third-Generation CPTED as a holistic and integrated approach. 

With this we intended to demonstrate CPTED can contribute powerfully to safer and more liveable neighbourhoods that move beyond merely satisfying basic biological and safety human needs, which First-Generation CPTED can be effective in securing through its proactive nature in addressing crime problems. 

We also argue that Second-Generation CPTED, has the power to address the social level needs and build neighbourhood capacity. This is done collaboratively with those within the neighbourhood and with other stakeholders to address local problems, but it still falls short at the “integrative criterion”. 

By adding a psychological dimension to CPTED’s established physical and social layers, we aimed to address the complexity of modern neighbourhoods — places where safety and livability go hand-in-hand with deeper human needs like self-actualization and transcendence. We propose this can be achieved through four pillars of sustainability: health, social, environmental, and economic.

Lt William Hutchinson, Palm Springs Police, is fully trained in the SafeGrowth/CPTED method.
He helped facilitate site visits for conference participants

SAFEGROWTH

As a neighbourhood safety planning method inclusive of CPTED, SafeGrowth has a strong foundation in all three elements.  

By planning safe neighbourhoods where local residents take an active and empowering role, proactivity and community building are the heart of SafeGrowth. Neighbourhood safety teams learn how to identify problems and develop solutions to existing problems. That is how they build a long-term plan of priorities to prevent problems from occurring in the first place.

Integrative crime prevention planning must, by definition,
involve residents from the neighbourhood

The integrative nature of SafeGrowth happens by embedding CPTED at all levels of safety planning and by using scientifically-proven crime prevention and social programs that align to each neighbourhood’s problems. There is no cookie-cutter approach in this method. Any program the neighbourhood adopts is directly tailored towards addressing that neighbourhood’s needs. 

The integrative power of SafeGrowth lies in its fusion of CPTED with science-backed prevention and social programs tailored to each neighbourhood’s unique challenges. These aren’t one-size-fits-all solutions — they’re built from the inside out, by and for the community.

I can no longer imagine addressing complex crime issues through unilateral responses. My hope is that holistic thinking — about both problems and solutions — becomes the new normal, so we can create responses that last.

Dignity by design - Rethinking MCM as we build affordable housing

Villa Hermosa in Palm Springs, successful multi-family housing in an MCM design - photo SchoolOfNight, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

by Gregory Saville

Across cities today, the rush to build affordable housing has triggered a frantic urgency: condo and apartment boxes going up fast — but communities left behind. We’re good at erecting buildings — we’re terrible at building neighborhoods. 

Urban design is the first step in that direction.

I’ve spent much of my career walking the streets of neighborhoods where people have little say in the shape of their lives. I’ve worked with gang members, people with disabilities, and residents of subsidized housing. I’ve spent time with youth growing up in trailer courts and high-rises, and I’ve taught students who return to homes where safety is a daily question.

This isn’t a story about where I live. It’s a reflection on what I’ve learned — and how I came to believe that dignity, beauty, and safety should be for everyone. 

THE MCM LESSON

Over the years, I’ve lived in a range of residential styles — some ornate, some utilitarian, some deeply personal. Each space taught me something about how we inhabit place. But the one home style that’s stayed with me most? Mid-Century Modern — MCM.

Not the high-concept, glass-and-steel showpieces in architecture magazines. I’m talking about modest versions — “mid-century modest”: clean lines, functional layouts, floor-to-ceiling windows, open flow to the outdoors. There’s something profound about living in a space where sunlight is intentional and walls don’t dominate. Many of the original architects thought MCM was perfectly suited for residential design – but they lost the plot when it came to scale.

MCM tiny homes provide another affordable housing option - photo via Pinterest 

That simplicity is deceptive. It’s not just aesthetic — it’s psychological. When architecture aligns with the people, not against them, something opens. That absence is glaring in today’s multi-family construction — in cities like Denver, Baltimore, Toronto, Calgary, and Washington, D.C., we’ve forgotten how to build for belonging.

Here’s the thing: design shapes behavior, but scale shapes belonging.

HOPE RISES

In our forthcoming book Hope Rises, we dedicate a full chapter to urban design and architectural history — and how those forces led us to high-crime neighborhoods. Our co-author Dr. Carl Bray, an urban design and heritage planning expert, crafted that chapter with depth and clarity.

When I studied planning, I learned how mid-century modernism reimagined cities — often with tragic results. Tower blocks, land-use segregation, sterile plazas. The urban renewal era promised progress but destroyed communities. Entire neighborhoods vanished. Families were displaced. The irony was brutal: in trying to design better lives, we designed lonelier ones.

We saw it in Toronto’s San Romanoway project in the early 2000s – a story that shows up in Hope Rises. It was in St. Louis, at Pruitt-Igoe, decades earlier. It showed up in the voids Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman wrote about. And in the birth of CPTED — and later, SafeGrowth — as direct responses to the failures of MCM at scale.

But all was not lost.

Danish co-housing in MCM design, open connections to greenery
- photo The Cohousing Newsletter 

Early Danish co-housing used MCM designs
- Skraplanet Co-housing, Denmark

DESIGNING FOR DIGNITY

At the human scale, mid-century design still holds beauty. Done right, it is warm, open, and connective. Like all great housing design, it combines privacy and community.  

MCM uses courtyards to ensure privacy, but loses big fences. It uses walls of windows to ensure connection. Minimalism, flow, connection to nature, indoor-outdoor blending — these aren’t luxuries. They’re tools. In the right hands, they nurture calm and in the right neighborhoods, they support cohesion.

I’ve seen this in co-housing communities — especially early Danish projects designed in the MCM spirit. Affordable. Modest. Yet beautiful and deeply human. Places that offer dignity without needing prestige. That invite safety without fortressing themselves off from the world.

One of the MCM homes in the Skraplanet co-housing neighborhood 

And that brings me here:

Everyone deserves to live somewhere that reflects care. Not opulence. Not perfection. Just care.

Dignified housing isn’t about square footage. It’s about scale, light, safety, and the freedom to feel at home in your own skin. That’s not out of reach. It’s a matter of priority — and the will to design for people, not profits.

We can build dense, multi-family housing. But we must also build neighborhoods with beauty, foresight, and with purpose.

So if you’re living in a space that feels like it was never meant for you — if the broken windows and broken systems suggest you’re invisible — you’re not the problem. The design was.

And that means we can redesign. We start by listening to the needs of residents. Then we build not just structures, but stories of place. And maybe we finish with homes that start to build a community in the truest sense — quiet, steady, and whole.

That’s what SafeGrowth is for.
That’s what our work is about.