Click on any numbered step in Vancouver’s PATH Pilot Timeline to view documentation from each step along their journey.
A Western PATH: Vancouver Pilot Site
Rooted in story, trust, and relationship, the PATH Process is a community-driven way to better support our people, especially those navigating housing challenges.
The PATH Process is currently being piloted in four locations across Canada.
Vancouver is the Western pilot site, walking this path on the traditional and ancestral unceded territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Qayqayt, Semiahmoo, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Tsawwassen, and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
While PATH is a national, Indigenous-led framework, each community brings it to life in its own way. In Vancouver, the PATH Process is shaped by local knowledge, relationships, and leadership, led by Lu’ma Native Housing Society.
Lu’ma serves as both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Community Entity (CE), providing funding for sub-projects to address homelessness. Lu’ma brings together community stakeholders to form Community Advisory Boards responsible for implementing community plans, approving funding proposals, and reporting on results.
For over 20 years, Lu’ma Native BCH Housing Society has partnered with the Federal Government through the Reaching Home Indigenous CE in the Greater Vancouver region and other urban areas across BC. Their work has been acknowledged by the Indigenous Steering Committee and federal partners as a best practice.
This pilot is about more than testing a process. It is about reclaiming how we listen, support, and walk alongside one another in ways that reflect our people, our stories, and our strengths.
Why It Matters
“The system asks me to tell my hardest story over and over, just to prove I need help.”
Mainstream tools (e.g., VAT) often ask the wrong questions in ways that feel cold, clinical, and disconnected from real housing needs.
The PATH Process was co-created by Indigenous communities coast-to-coast-to-coast, alongside the National Indigenous Homelessness Council, in response to a national call for change. Through the PATH Process, we:
- Honour stories and strengths
- Build relationships, not reports
- Make housing decisions with heart, not just data
Vancouver Pathfinder
Kyle Mellish
Community-Based Pathfinder, Vancouver
📧 kyle@lnhs.ca
🔗 Visit: lnhs.ca/homelessness-entity
Local Support Partners
- Lived/Living Experience voices and Elders to lead the work
- Community-based PATH Working Group members
- Lu’ma Native Housing Society
- Aboriginal Mother Centre
- Community Builders
- Connective
- Fraser River Indigenous Society
- Hollyburn Community Services Society
- Indigenous Homelessness Steering Committee (IH CAB)
- Metro-Vancouver Community Advisory Board (DC CAB)
- Progressive Housing Society
- Providence Health Care
- Sage Nation Society
- Seniors Services Society BC
- Tres Community
- Ursa Creative, Development/Technical Consultant