Strategies

By "Use of Activity for Well-Being" we refer to strategies that include providing access to activities that promote well-being. We can offer these strategies with individuals, communities and populations of people who experience homelessness by making activities more accessible. Many people who experience homelessness describe experiencing profound boredom during and following homelessness that causes them to question their own existence, drives substance use, and creates the conditions that allow traumatic memories to resurface [1-3]. This situation erodes the state of a person's mental health, and can be mitigated by helping individuals to occupy their time in ways that are meaningful. Strategies for using activity for well-being can be employed across the "Four Processes."

• During the "Survival Process" (i.e. while a person is unhoused), we can offer opportunities that provide access to meaningful activity for people who are unhoused. Such opportunities may include engaging Indigenous communities in the provision of cultural and spiritual activities in the support of Indigenous persons who are unhoused. It may also include holding a card tournament in a shelter setting to provide an opportunity for people who are staying in the shelter to do something that is meaningful, thereby taking their minds off of the stress of homelessness for a period of time.

• During the "Adaptation Process" (i.e. soon after a person is housed), we can offer opportunities for people who have been recently housed following homelessness to engage in meaningful activities by running groups in the community that are specifically for people who have recently secured a tenancy. Such opportunities could involve securing funding to pay for theatre admission, and inviting people who have recently moved into their own housing following homelessness to meet there to watch a movie together.

• During the "Integration Process" (i.e. after a person has been housed for longer), we may introduce a person who has been housed following homelessness to a community organization that may be looking for volunteers, or invite them to participate in volunteering to do landscaping at a local community organization that cannot afford to pay for such services. Such opportunities can not only help individuals to engage in their community following homelessness, but they may also help people to build new social networks outside of the unhoused community. ​

• During the "Precarity Process" (i.e. when a person is at imminent risk of losing their housing), we may encourage a person who is at risk of losing their housing to go for a walk together, as a strategy to cope with the stress of this experience, and at a time when they may feel unable to go for a walk on their own. We may also invite them to groups that we may be running in the community which engage people in meaningful activities to provide a distraction from the stress that they are currently experiencing, while at the same time that we are supporting the person to employ strategies to avoid a tenancy loss.