In London, Ontario, a new approach to homelessness is taking shape. The ARCH initiative - Action Research to End Chronic Homelessness - is challenging the way the city responds, ensuring Indigenous leadership and community voices are at the center (CAEH, 2025).
What makes ARCH different is not just the program it delivers, but who is leading the change. Led by the Atlohsa Family Healing Services, Arch is putting Indigenous communities in the driver’s seat. Indigenous peoples are disproportionately represented among those experiencing homelessness, yet mainstream services too often miss the mark- failing to address cultural identity, intergenerational trauma, and community healing (Homeless Hub, 2025). ARCH is able to do something revolutionary: housing solutions now honor traditions, including healing practices, and involve communities in every decision (Atlohsa, 2025).
One of the most powerful commitments of ARCH is its dedication of 30% of London’s homelessness funding to Indigenous-led services (CAEH, 2025). This move not only provides resources but also shifts power, ensuring equity in decision-making. ARCH also follows the OCAP principles- Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession- which guarantee that Indigenous communities maintain authority over their own data. This protects cultural integrity and ensures that programs reflect lived realities rather than outside assumptions (Homeless Hub, 2025).
As important as funding structures and data principles are, ARCH’s reach goes far beyond these notions. It is about reconciliation in action. By embedding Indigenous knowledge systems, practices of care, and collective decision-making into housing policy, London is modeling what a just approach to ending homelessness can look like. The initiative recognizes that homelessness can be brief, and non-recurring when solutions are designed with respect for culture, history and community at its center (CAEH, 2025).
ARCH is also a blueprint for other cities. Across Canada, communities are searching for ways to make coordinated access more equitable and culturally responsive. London demonstrates that transformation happens when Indigenous leadership is supported, and not tokenized. Rather than layering Indigenous perspectives onto existing systems, ARCH rebuilds the system itself to reflect Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Ending chronic homelessness is not only a policy challenge but a cultural one. London’s ARCH initiative shows that when Indigenous voices lead, and when reconciliation is directly implemented into housing solutions, the path forward becomes clearer.
%20(1).png)
