Since 2017, researchers at Royal Roads University have been following the progress of participants in Whistler non-profit Zero Ceiling’s groundbreaking Work 2 Live program, which helps support youth at risk of homelessness transition to self-sufficiency through supportive housing, employment and adventure-based learning. But, like so many things over the past two years, COVID-19 threw a wrench in those plans, delaying the final report from the study’s third year, 2019, until last month.
The lag time came with an unintended side effect, however. Nearly three years after the fact, and the study’s findings serve as something of a time capsule, capturing an organization in flux and foreshadowing the shifts that were still to come.
“This was carried out six months before the pandemic and it really just accelerated things. Everything we were hoping to do in maybe three years, we did in 18 months,” explained Lizi McLoughlin, Zero Ceiling’s development manager. “We took on the additional houses. We took on employment partners. We rethought that model. We massively expanded the mental health support we provide.”
Carried out between August and November 2019, the study was the culmination of 21 in-depth interviews with current Work 2 Live participants, program graduates, Zero Ceiling staff, and board members.
“The thing that really stood out for us was the level of support the youth were asking for. It really pushed us to take a look at everything,” McLoughlin noted. “So many of those recommendations came out of this report and were really driven by the fact that that’s what the youth were asking for.”
Mental health support
Prior to the pandemic, Zero Ceiling wasn’t directly providing significant levels of mental health support, but “really in the past two years, we’ve had to pivot completely and a huge part of that work that our youth workers and caseworkers do now is mental health support,” McLoughlin explained.
That has translated to 24-7, round-the-clock support and an expanded staff team, including an onsite support worker at the private home housing six Work 2 Live participants. Another home—a three-bedroom unit in the Granite Ridge building in Cheakamus Crossing—was secured last spring thanks to a landmark agreement inked with the Whistler Housing Authority, which now houses three female Work 2 Live participants.
Interestingly, as Zero Ceiling’s mandate has widened, its support for Work 2 Live participants and graduates has grown more focused, with staff taking a more individualized approach, something that was identified as an area for improvement in the study.
“I would like to see interpersonal support [and] each person having their own gains to get to where they want to be,” one program grad commented in the study. “There is no other person in the program that is where I am at now and it has been so hard … so I can understand why no one has really come up to this point.”
Housing
For years, Zero Ceiling housed participants, often in shared units, in a Whistler Blackcomb staff housing building in the valley, but with the switch to operating its own housing, participants have their own rooms and staff are better able to manage any issues as they arise.
“The first thing is participants no longer have to share bedrooms, which is fantastic and just gives people privacy and control of their own space,” McLoughlin said. ”These are permanent homes for Zero Ceiling and they definitely feel like a home.”
Zero Ceiling has increasingly adopted more of an advocacy role in the pandemic as well, with co-executive director Sean Easton in particular taking up the mantle on behalf of Whistler’s most vulnerable residents, both at Zero Ceiling and as a new board member for the Whistler Valley Housing Society.
“We think there’s opportunity to diversify the approach to housing so we can meet the needs of all community members and so people don’t get squeezed out,” he told Pique in an interview last spring.
Employment
The pandemic also pushed the organization to rethink its employment model, which sees it partnering with local businesses to offer work to program participants. Whistler Blackcomb has played a huge role in that arrangement, and still does—about half of the current participants work for the ski resort. But with COVID shutting down the mountain early two years in a row, staff looked to diversify its list of partner employers in town. That came with a subtle-but-important change in philosophy as well.
“There was one quote [from the study] that really stood out about being able to provide people not just an opportunity for employment but the opportunities that they wanted and needed,” McLoughlin said. Now, staff will work to pair participants to a job of their choosing, even if that employer isn’t on the list of partner businesses, giving youth more say in their time here. “It really resonated with us that we wanted to empower people not just to be working in a job, but a job that was meaningful to them, where they felt it could help take them in the direction they want to go.”
Moving away from staff housing means participants’ housing is no longer tied to their employment status, giving them more freedom to pursue their passions in Whistler that go beyond their job.
“Not everybody now needs to work full-time, so if it’s working for somebody to do a couple shifts a week, maybe they receive an income supplement, that’s great, then they can do that and do what works for them,” said McLoughlin. “It’s 100-per-cent the direction we wanted to go in and 100-per-cent why we invested so much in our capacity and the size of our staff team so we can do that.”
A common refrain heard from participating employers was the need for more resources so they could better support the Work 2 Live participants in their workplace. Zero Ceiling now does monthly check-ins where participants will sit down with a caseworker and their manager. The non-profit also runs “mental health First Aid” training courses for all the managers it works with, offering “tangible, practical content about recognizing and supporting people with mental health challenges, and also lots of great discussion about how that shows up in the workplace,” McLoughlin said.
Inherent challenges
Whistler offers a number of benefits to Work 2 Live participants: easy access to nature and outdoor adventure, a tightknit sense of community, and ample opportunities for work chief among them. But Whistler, by its very nature, poses several inherent challenges as well.
In the study, several interviewees noted how the resort’s party lifestyle only adds to the temptation around substance use. (It should be noted Zero Ceiling does not require participants to be sober in their time here, preferring a harm-reduction approach.)
“There is going to be so much party and drug use around so just be aware and watch out for it and don’t fall into that trap,” said one participant.
Others interviewed highlighted the tenuous nature of housing here, something that has been ameliorated through Zero Ceiling now operating its own housing, while some touched on challenges with their employer.
Staff in the study also recognized the need to better tailor their approach for Indigenous participants so they can best navigate the program.
“The things we see people struggle with the most, particularly with the Indigenous young people—it is the context of where they are in their families and in the world,” said one staff member in the report.
Funding was noted as another challenge for Zero Ceiling, something the pandemic has both helped and hindered: without the ability to run its regular fundraising events, Zero Ceiling’s most productive funding stream was cut off, but COVID-19 has also led to new grants opening up at both the provincial and federal level. Whistlerites have also generously opened their wallets throughout the pandemic—the organization hit its $150,000 fundraising goal for 2021—something McLoughlin believes is at least partly to do with a greater understanding of the barriers many face in town.
”Since the beginning of the pandemic, there’s been such a shift in the way people look at some of these social issues that maybe weren’t talked about that often in Whistler up to that point,” she said. “I think there’s been much greater recognition of the challenges facing people in this community and the people we work with are some of the most vulnerable in our community, but it’s not just them. It’s loads of people dealing with challenges around income and the cost of living and things like that.
“It’s not an easy problem to solve but we definitely feel really supported and it’s been really collaborative to figure out what this looks like moving forward.”
To view the full report, visit zeroceiling.org/research.
“I encourage people to take a look at the report and read some of these people’s experiences in their own words because they speak better to them than I can,” McLouglin said.
Zero Ceiling is hosting its AGM on April 26 at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre from 5 to 7 p.m.
The non-profit is also looking to hire an overnight support worker. Find the job listing at zeroceiling.org/join-our-team.
