• Guidelines to a Low Barrier, Housing Focused Shelter
• Housing Focused Shelter Manual
• Housing Focused Shelter Self-Assessment (XLSX)

See past and upcoming webinars from CSTN offering further guidance on how to transform to a housing-focused shelter system.

Webinars from 2019 to present can be found on the CSTN Webinar page.

Diversion

• See Diversion information and resources on the Built for Zero Canada website

Intake

• Coming soon

Self -Directed and Staff Engaged Rapid Resolution

• Self-Directed and Staff Engaged Rapid Resolution – Part 1, Part 2 (Webinar – 90 min) – Rapid Resolution is a housing intervention designed to immediately resolve a household’s homelessness once they enter shelter. This session reviews how service providers can engage shelter residents in deliberate, thoughtful and individualized conversations that seek to solve their immediate housing crisis.
• Region of Waterloo Renter’s Toolkit – If you are working with someone experiencing homelessness to find a place to rent, this guide can help you search for and secure housing.
• Housing Action Plan – It is a collaborative tool for shelter staff and guests to navigate the housing search process together. It provides clear steps, realistic goals, and essential resources to support a successful transition
  from shelter to stable housing.
• Housing Search Log – It is a tracking tool for shelter staff and guests to document progress in securing rental housing. It helps organize apartment listings, track inquiries, applications, and follow-ups, ensuring a structured and efficient search process. 
• Housing Preference List – This tool helps shelter staff and guests identify and prioritize housing needs and preferences. It can help staff and guests outline key factors like location, affordability, and amenities. 
• Common Housing Start-Up Items – This form helps shelter staff and guests identify essential items needed for a successful move into a new home. By outlining key household necessities, this tool ensures a smooth transition, promotes preparedness, and helps coordinate resources to create a stable and comfortable living environment.

Coordinated Entry/By-Name Data

• See Coordinated Entry and By-Name Data information and resources on the Built for Zero-Canada website.
• By Name Data, Coordinated Entry & Getting Shelter Guests ‘Document Ready’ Recording and Presentation Slides (2024) – By-Name Data and Coordinated Entry (aka Coordinated Access) are vital components to any system that aims to end homelessness. This webinar provides an introduction to these components, and addresses the important link between them and emergency shelter providers 
• Document Ready Checklist for Shelters – Being ‘document ready’ means having the essential documents – such as ID, income verification, and housing history – that landlords and housing programs require. This sample checklist supports shelter staff and guests to track what is in place, identify what’s missing, and take steps to secure the right documents  so people can into housing more quickly (through Coordinated Entry or outside of it).
• Document Readiness Tracking Spreadsheet – This Excel tool helps shelter staff track multiple guests’ progress in becoming document ready -all in one place. It allows staff to see at a glance which documents are complete, which are still outstanding, and the dates of completion. The spreadsheet includes separate tabs for families, individual adults, and youth, making it easy to organize and monitor progress across different groups.

Building community support tools

• Dear Neighbour Poster (Siloam Mission – Winnipeg, MB) – This neighbourhood poster provides surrounding residents with clear contact information and guidance on who to reach out to when certain situations or concerns arise near the shelter, helping strengthen communication and community safety.
• Media Toolkit (End Homelessness Winnipeg) – Developed to empower media with facts and guidelines for reporting on homelessness, human rights can be better protected, and the public interest can be better served.
• Outreach Door Knocker (Main Street Project – Winnipeg, MB) – This doorknocker introduces their Mobile Outreach Team, provides contact details, and explains how neighbours can connect with the team to support unsheltered community members and strengthen local relationships.

OTHER HELPFUL MATERIALS

• Amnesty Tote Procedure (sample) – This procedure outlines a structured approach for guests to safely store personal belongings without judgment, while supporting shelter operations in maintaining safety, organization, and accessibility. It is intended as a reference or starting point for shelters considering the adoption of an amnesty tote system.
• Search Procedure (sample) – This procedure outlines clear steps when conducting a search of a shelter guest’s personal belongings in a manner that aims to ensure safety and security while respecting the dignity and rights of shelter guests. It is intended as a reference for shelters developing or refining their own search protocols.
• Drug Poisoning Response (sample) – This response outlines immediate response steps, staff roles and additional actions when responding to a suspected or confirmed drug poisoning within an emergency shelter. it is intended as a reference or starting point for shelters developing or updating their own drug poisoning response protocols

• Newfoundland Shelter Standards (2024)
• Ottawa Emergency Shelter Standards (2021) & Council Report
• BC Housing Emergency Shelter Program Framework (2018)
• BC Housing Shelter Design Guidelines (2017)
• Waterloo Region Emergency Shelter Program Framework (2017) & Summary & CAEH17 Presentation
• Alberta LGBTQ2S Housing and Shelter Guidelines (2017)
• Toronto Shelter Standards (2015)
• City of Edmonton Emergency Shelter Best Practices Guide (2024)

Considerations and Tools to Respond Effectively

• Integrating Health Care San Diego County, California
• Engaging Neighbors and Businesses Las Cruces, New Mexico
• Housing-Focused Outreach Hennepin County, Minnesota
• Engaging Encampment Residents in Solutions Denver Colorado
• Webinar Recording and Slides for USICH’s 19 Encampment Strategies: A Conversation With Communities | United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (June 2024) – In this interactive 1-hour webinar, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) provide a brief overview of USICH’s 19 Strategies for Communities to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively.
• Ending Homelessness for People Living in Encampments in Canada Toolkit (OrgCode, March 2022) – this toolkit was commissioned by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness with the intention of giving communities tools for a housing-focused, rights-based approach to ending homelessness for people living in encampments.
• Encampments Webinar (hosted by CAEH and presented by Orgcode, April 2024)
• Encampments Webinar Series (hosted by CAEH and presented by Orgcode, Fall 2020)
• Fact Sheet: New US Initiative to Tackle Unsheltered Homelessness (May 2023) – ALL INside, a key component of the Federal Strategic Plan to Pevent and End Homelessness (2022) in which USICH and its 19 federal member agencies will partner with state and local governments to strengthen and accelerate local efforts to get unsheltered people into homes in six places: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix Metro, Seattle, and the State of California. An example of a comprehensive and coordinated approach to ending homelessness for people in encampments.
• BC Encampment and Homelessness Response – HEART & HEARTH – BC Housing is working with partners to provide people living outdoors and in encampments with better access to a range of support services, new shelters, and housing options through new programs funded by the Province under the Belonging in BC Homelessness Plan: Homeless Encampment Action Response Team (HEART) and the Homeless Encampment Action Response Temporary Housing (HEARTH).
• Seven Principles for Addressing Encampments (USICH, June 2022) – a six page document with links to further resource
• Protecting the Health and Well-being of People in Encampments and Other People Who Access Public Spaces (HUD, June 2022) – a five-page document outlining four key steps to developing and implementing an inclusive public space management strategy.
• What Other Cities Can Learn from Boston’s Public Health Approach to Homelessness (UISCH Blog, June 2022)
• Responding to the Growing Crisis of Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampments (UISCH Blog, May 2022)
• Ending Homelessness for People Living in Encampments: Advancing the Dialogue (USICH, 2015) – report and materials designed to assist communities in developing an action plan that will link people experiencing homelessness and living in an encampment, with permanent housing opportunities:
• Ending Homelessness for People Living in Encampments: Advancing the Dialogue Report – includes PDF of a Quick Guide and Planning Checklist
• Chatham Kent’s Homelessness Response Toolkit – Reach Out Chatham-Kent (R.O.C.K.) has created a Homelessness Response Toolkit to help businesses, BIAs, and community members better understand homelessness and respond with compassion. The goal is to reduce stigma, provide clear guidance, and encourage supportive interactions with people experiencing homelessness

Community Examples of Housing Focused Responses

• Peterborough from Encampment to Bridge Housing (April 2024) – Recording and PDF 
• Compassionate decampment: lessons from Oppenheimer Park (CAEH, March 2024)
• Bright Spot: How Fort McMurray resolved an encampment without enforcement (CAEH, Jan 2024)
• A Tale of Two Tent Cities: The Critical Role of Housing Engagement in Addressing Homeless Encampments (US, Spring 2023) – a 32 page Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy article. Using the experience of Gainesville, Florida as a case study, this rticle summarizes the outcomes achieved with the housing engagement approach. Includes appendixes with Transitional Campground Expectations and Closure Procedures

us hud resources for winter sheltering and cold weather response (Generally and during covid)

• Winter Response Planning – Recording and PDF
• Winter Planning Guide Overview: Meeting Winter Shelter Needs and Mitigating Health Risks – helps communities engage critical partners, project winter sheltering capacity needs, create a Winter Emergency Plan to meet escalating levels of shelter demand and consider alternative approaches to winter sheltering, and prevent the spread of COVID-19 in winter shelter facilities.
• How to Complete the Winter Emergency Plan Planning Guide and Template – guides communities through identifying resources needed to effectively respond to three levels of escalating winter sheltering needs.
• Alternative Approaches to Winter Sheltering During COVID-19 – provides a graduated approach to sheltering from life-threatening temperatures and regular seasonal weather.
• Winter Response Activation and Communications Planning Guide and Template – provides a set of key decision points to help communities define what triggers a winter emergency response and how weather alerts are communicated to key stakeholders.
• COVID-19 Preparedness Checklist for Shelter Facilities – provides a series of checklists designed to help providers implement strategies for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in winter facilities.

Sample canadian extreme weather response plans from communities

• • Edmonton Homeless-Serving Sector Public Health Response and Resources
  • End Homelessness Winnipeg Emergency Response
  • Guelph-Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination – Community Cold Weather Response 
  • Fraser Health Toolkit for Extreme Heat and People Experiencing Homelessness – provides tools and resources related to extreme heat response for those who work with people experiencing homelessness or in low-income buildings.
  • Hamilton Cold Alerts and Community Response 
  • London Winter Response Plan 
  • Saskatoon’s Cold Weather Strategy (2021)
  • Saskatoon’s Extreme Weather Strategy (2021)
  • Toronto Winter Services Plan for People Experiencing Homelessness 
  • York Region 2023/2024 Cold Weather Response Plan for People Experiencing Homelessness
  • York Region Heat Relief Strategy for People Experiencing Homelessness

• Safely Serving Families and Victims of Domestic Violence (NAEH 2018 webinar – 90 min) Download slides
• Safety Planning for Survivors of Domestic and Sexual Violence: A Toolkit for Housing Programs (NASH, 2018)
• Safe Housing Partnerships– the website for the Domestic Violence and Housing Technical Assistance Consortium. Find useful resources and tools that advance your work at the critical intersection of domestic violence, sexual assault, homelessness, and housing. 
• Housing, Homelessness and Violence Against Women (Women’s Shelters Canada, 2017)
• Trauma and Violence Informed Care (TVIC): An Orientation Tool for Service Providers in the Homeless Sector (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2019)
• Gender Integrated Shelters: Experience and Advice (FORGE, 2016)
• Safety and Privacy Consideration When Using Hotels for Shelter Stays (NNEDV, 2013) 
• See also, Partnering with Other Systems – Domestic Violence