Supporting those struggling with mental health, homelessness, and addictions

To help people with serious and persistent mental illness live successfully in an affordable home of their choice with as much independence as possible.

Progressive Housing offers mental health supported housing through 5 different housing programs for a total of approx. 150 clients. Our income support and recovery based services facilitate skill development, relationship building, community engagement and role achievement in order to build hope and achieve improved quality of life.

All of our referrals come through the Burnaby Mental Health and Substance Use outpatient centre. Program participants must be active clients of Burnaby Mental Health Services having diagnosed psychiatric disorders requiring ongoing treatment.

Recovery &
Strength-Based Approach

Recovery can look different depending on who you are talking to, from learning activities of daily living such as cooking, cleaning and budgeting, to accessing community resources such as the community centre and social leisure programs, to pursuing education, to achieving volunteer and vocational goals. Our staff are here to help our clients negotiate housing, the community and to facilitate the realization of their hopes and dreams, whatever that might mean to a particular individual.

mental health supportive housing

Support services are determined through Recovery Plan Reviews that include the participant, their support worker and their Case Manager at the Burnaby Mental Health outpatient centre. Our programs are client driven/client centred, and follow the principles of psycho-social rehabilitation, the Strengths-Based model and the Recovery Centred Clinical System model. Our housing programs are considered transitional, but are not time-limited, and are available to our clients for as long as they require support services and affordable housing. Many of our clients eventually move on to either independent living or long-term affordable housing such as BC Housing, SAFER or other non-profit housing developments. Funding for our mental health housing programs is provided by the Fraser Health Authority’s Shared Housing and Residential Program.

The Supported Independent Living Program

The Supported Independent Living Program provides a rental subsidy of up to $500 so that our clients can rent their own market apartment anywhere within the boundary of Burnaby’s borders. We have approximately 100 clients in this program at any given time. This subsidy can also be used to rent a room in a shared living arrangement. An applicant is not able to access this program should they be living with their family. Support workers meet with our clients in their homes or the community as many as 2 times per week to as little as once per month, depending on our client’s Recovery Plan goals and level of support required. The SIL program now has 1 5-bedroom shared house which is a new model designed to make an ever more expensive housing market more affordable.

The Shared Housing Program

The Shared Housing Program consists of 2 5-bedroom houses and 2 shared townhouses for a total of 13 beds. The program provides a safe and affordable shared home for our clients along with support services as outlined in a resident’s Recovery Plan. Clients meet support staff on a weekly basis but for the most part, live with minimal supervision.

The Community Living Program

We have 22 clients in the Community Living Program. This program is identical to the Supported Independent LivingProgram except that it does not provide a housing subsidy, but rather is a support-only program. Our Community Living clients typically have their own housing and do not require a subsidy, but still benefit from our support services. Sometimes this is on a short-term basis, other times this support is required for the longer term. Our Community Living clients have also developed a Recovery Plan, as in our other housing programs, used to determine which support services that require, goals they would like to work on, hopes and dreams they would like to pursue.

The Georgia House Transitional Program

Georgia House residents live in a 5 bedroom House and take a proactive approach in their own recovery journey while living in a therapeutic and supportive environment. Georgia House staff provide support services 5 days a week. We offer wellness activities for residents, both in the home and in the community, such as weekly 1:1 appointments with the support staff, weekly house meetings, a life-skills group, health groups, communal meal preparation, outings, fundraisers and support in accessing events in the community. Our goal is for our graduates of this program to have gained the life-skills necessary to move on to live as independently as possible.

The Rent Supplement Program

The Rent Supplement Program is a subsidy-only program with a total of 7 subsidies. This program is only available to those who have graduated from our supported housing programs and have demonstrated their ability to live independently without support services. It is funded by BC Housing and administered by the Progressive Housing Society.