Beyond the Binary of Shelter and Housing ? Local Experiments with Rooming Houses as Intermediate Solutions to Homelessness

The crisis in affordable and social housing, and the rise in homelessness have become major social issues in Quebec in recent years, particularly in region, rural and semi-rural areas (Gaulin, 2024; MacDonald et al., 2020). In the face of limited resources and a lack of sustainable measures, the most marginalized populations have seen their living conditions deteriorate. Between emergency solutions and individual housing, intermediate options remain scarce and are often poorly adapted to the diversity of needs—particularly with regard to low-threshold access.

In this context, several stakeholders from one Quebec region—representing the health and social services, community, and municipal sectors—approached the research team to support and evaluate the implementation of two initiatives aimed at people experiencing or at risk of homelessness: a low-threshold rooming house and a women’s rooming house.

The research method is an environmental scan. Over a period of more than a year, the research team conducted a qualitative study based on direct observations (within the rooming houses and during committee meetings), semi-structured interviews (N = 43), and regular feedback sessions (quarterly). The research team has been conducting collaborative research with institutional and community partners in this territory since 2018, focusing on initiatives addressing homelessness.

The presentation will first offer a comparative analysis of the two rooming house models, focusing on the governance dynamics and intersectoral collaborations that made their establishment and integration into local stakeholder networks possible. It will then situate these initiatives within the broader local ecosystem of community-based and private “rooming house” projects, to explore how local actors develop contextualized and specific responses to a global issue such as the fight against social inequality and for the access of social and health services.

The presentation will also discuss certain limitations inherent to this type of model.