Canada's homelessness and housing policy landscape,
in one place.
One database. Hundreds of municipalities. Searchable by anyone.
Analytical PowerBI Dashboard
Why this
work matters
More than one in ten Canadians has experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Every level of government has mobilized a response. But without a shared way to understand what's working, those responses risk being disconnected from each other and from the people most affected.
How to use
Search - Enter a municipality, province, or policy theme to pull up relevant homelessness and housing policies from across Canada.
Step one
Compare - See how policies stack up against each other - by region, municipality size, or how detailed and enforceable they are.
Step two
Use what you find - Download documents, explore the national dashboard, and take the data back into your own work.
Step three
Canada's homelessness policy landscape, mapped and searchable.
Meet the Team
CivicInquire is built and maintained by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Waterloo, spanning planning, public health, mathematics, and computer science. The project is led by the Future Cities Institute and guided by practitioners and partners with direct experience in homelessness policy across Canada.
Homelessness Policy Map
(BETA with fictitious sample data for illustration purposes)
FAQs
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CivicInquire is an open-access digital platform and policy repository dedicated to supporting evidence-based, actionable, and aligned solutions to homelessness and housing challenges across Canada. The platform was developed and is maintained by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Waterloo, with support from the Faculties of Environment and Health, the Future Cities Institute, and external grant funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
CivicInquire brings together homelessness and housing planning, policy, and strategy information from across the country in one place, providing researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates with the tools and resources needed to understand and act on Canada's homelessness policy landscape. The platform features a national policy dashboard, a searchable policy database, and a curated collection of research articles, infographics, and summaries.
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CivicInquire is open access, meaning it is free to use for everyone whether you're a policymaker, municipal representative, urban planner, public health professional, healthcare provider, social worker, housing developer, researcher, advocate, or someone interested in housing and/or homelessness issues that may be affecting your community!
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CivicInquire and its tools can be used in a number of ways. The policy database allows users to search for housing and homelessness plans, policies, and strategies by location or time period, and to conduct comparative or academic policy analysis. The platform's knowledge mobilization resources provide access to policy briefs, research summaries, and study infographics drawn from Canadian research, including work produced by the University of Waterloo team. The national policy dashboard allows users to track developments in housing and homelessness policy across Canada over time.
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Subscribe to the Future Cities Institute mailing list to receive updates on platform developments, new tools and resources, housing and homelessness research, and opportunities to collaborate on community-oriented research projects.
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The CivicInquire database contains over 2,500 direct links to housing and homelessness policies, plans, and strategies from municipalities and governments across Canada. Users can search the database using simple keyword searches or advanced filtering options.
