Making Room: Ending Homelessness (A Speaker Series)
Making Room: Ending Homelessness
About the Event
Homelessness is often treated as an intractable crisis. In reality, progress happens when advocates understand how policy is made, where power sits, and how to push governments toward lasting housing solutions.
This first event in the Making Room speaker series features Diana Chan McNally, who will share her work on homelessness, the policy wins she has helped secure, and how she influences policy and policymakers to get real solutions in place.
Speaker: Diana Chan McNally
Diana Chan McNally (Dipl. CW BFA MA MEd) has been a front-line community worker and homelessness advocate in downtown Toronto for the past decade. As someone with lived experience of social services and of being unhoused, Diana’s work focuses on human rights and equity issues for people who are homeless.
Diana is the co-founder and Coordinator of the Ontario Coalition for the Rights of Homeless People, and is currently associated with The Shift, a Canadian-based, international housing rights organization, and St. Luke’s Out of the Cold program. In addition to serving on the steering committees and boards of Justice for Children and Youth and Health Providers Against Poverty, Diana also sits on the City of Toronto's Housing Rights Advocacy Committee. She is also a regular contributing columnist to Toronto Today.
Event Schedule
7:00 – 7:20 PM
Arrival and networking
7:20 – 7:30 PM
Welcome and opening remarks
7:30 – 8:15 PM
Talk and discussion
8:15 – 8:35 PM
Audience Q&A
8:35 – 9:00 PM
Networking and informal conversation
What You’ll Learn
What real policy wins on homelessness look like
How lived experience and frontline work shape effective advocacy
How to influence municipal and provincial decision-making
Practical strategies for moving from crisis to permanent homes
Who Should Attend
Housing advocates, planners, service providers, students, policymakers, and residents who want to move beyond surface-level debates and understand how homelessness can actually be reduced.