The Peel Alliance to End Homelessness stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests happening across Canada, the U.S., and the world. We know this race-based violence exists in the Region of Peel and this is a moment in time where it is critical that we amplify the Black Lives Matter movement and the voices of our Black community leaders.
Our community is reckoning with this moment and how to respond to a long and extensive history of anti-Black racism embedded into all public institutions including policing, courts, corrections, education, health, child welfare, and yes, housing and homelessness systems in Peel. Racism can be an eruption or a slow burn – the sustained denial of rights over time, or the sudden theft of life itself. Or both, as with the pervasive reality that Black, Indigenous and people of colour are more likely to experience housing precarity, homelessness, poverty, inequitable educational opportunities and public health, and also be confronted by police violence.
The Peel Alliance to End Homelessness is foundationally about taking shared accountability for the end of homelessness. That’s why we advocate to measure and report homelessness data, collaboration, and systems transformation. The PAEH functions to support the end to homelessness in Peel because our hope for a just society is at stake. We work in service of lasting solutions because that is the only option in the face of inequity. The racism that pervades our country’s systems, our communities, and each of us urgently demands such real and lasting solutions.
We know that there is more we can and must do. We recognize that the PAEH is largely led by White people and that we must continue our journey to fully realize diversity, equity, inclusion, and centre ourselves and our work in anti-racism and anti-oppression. As we move forward, the PAEH is committed to taking shared accountability for racial equity and anti-racism in our local homelessness response systems and upstream systems that plunge people into them. We are re-committing ourselves to the work of deconstructing racism and supporting the builders in our community that are pursuing justice, equity, and amplifying the calls to action to our sector and the broader community.
We can and must do better. Black Lives Matter.
