Research - Dr. Mary Ellen Donnan
Homelessness in Canada's Urban Centres
Dr. Mary Donnan
Department of Sociology
Dr. Donnan has a chapter, “Making Change: Gender Careers and Citizenship” coming out in a textbook on Gender Relations: Intersectionality and Beyond from Oxford University Press in the spring of 2008. That chapter considers how identities and social structures intersect along lines of gender, sex, colonialist policy, ethnicity, immigration and citizenship to shape patterns of opportunity and reward in Canadian career patterns
Issues of diversity and inclusion also figure prominently in a book Dr. Donnan is writing about homelessness in Canada’s urban centres. The purpose of this book is to advance knowledge about development of long-term, sustainable solutions to the housing crisis in Canada. The strategy for this project involves analysis of patterns of disadvantage which significantly shape the likelihood of becoming homeless. That analysis reveals how the causes of homelessness are structural rather than individual. Key issues addressed are: the scale of social responsibility, responsiveness to diversity including, aboriginal people, recent immigrants, women, single parents, large families, and inclusivity of planning and decision-making processes in the development of housing policy.
Another research project of Dr. Donnan’s centres on the unique housing market for, and needs characteristic of Aboriginals in Winnipeg. While First Nations people constitute less than 10 per cent of Winnipeg’s overall population, they constitute 60 to 70 per cent of the homeless population within that city and face unique problems within their communities. A regional equity framework characterized by a commitment to including aboriginal perspectives within the process of building solutions, and racial equity in the outcome of program development will make this an original response to those problems. Dr. Donnan is doing a case study dealing with all of the housing and shelter challenges of First Nations peoples in Winnipeg with the intention of getting beyond the oversights of the mainstream housing programs which are so clearly not meeting the needs of that particular segment of Winnipeg’s population. The data collection process will involve textual documents, interviews and an active-research consultation process.
February 2008
