Context
Intelligent Futures, in partnership with the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership and the City of Saskatoon, is running a CMHC-funded Solutions Lab to co-develop new ways of collaborating and working together in the City’s housing system. The CMHC Solutions Lab Program uniquely creates the right environment for collaboration and forward-thinking innovation for the future of housing in Canada. Further uncovering viable solutions and opportunities to enhance the viability of different housing options to accommodate all needs while providing roadmaps to further promote learning and showcase successful solutions, allowing for replication and scalability of findings in years to come.
This Solutions Lab intends to co-develop new ways of working and collaborating in the City’s housing system to strengthen partnerships, streamline processes, and reduce redundancies in the Saskatoon context. The intent is to provide individuals experiencing homelessness with relevant support and services to meet their complex needs while empowering service providers through collaboration to meet these needs collectively. With this in mind, this Solutions Lab will be exploring the challenge question:
‘How can the Saskatoon housing sector find new ways of working together by addressing the needs of community members facing an intersection of challenges?’
The Complex Challenge
Through a collaborative, innovative process, this Solutions Lab will take a holistic approach to understand the factors that influence the challenge question at hand. These factors include:
Through the Lab process, an interdisciplinary group of committed individuals and organizations will collaborate to explore this complex system and co-create and test potential solutions that can positively impact the Saskatoon housing sector. The intended result is a roadmap that reflects the learning of the Lab and provides other Canadian cities with ideas, models and solutions that can be applied to help improve housing across the country.