Call for Proposals 2025/2026

IMPORTANT: Deadline for applications is 4:00 pm (Labrador time) on February 14, 2025

PLEASE NOTE: $1,394,391 million in funding has been awarded to the Labrador Friendship Centre to allocate through the Reaching Home Indigenous NL project over a 1-year period.

This CFP extends from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026. As per Reaching Home directives, all projects must be completed, and funds spent, by March 31, 2026, with possibility of extension.

Reaching Home is a national initiative which aims to prevent and reduce homelessness across Canada. Reaching Home Indigenous NL is the funding stream serving Indigenous people who live off-reserve in the province of Newfoundland & Labrador.

Definition of Indigenous Homelessness

For the purposes of Reaching Home, and subject to revision based on ongoing engagement and consultation with Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous homelessness refers to:

Indigenous Peoples who are in the state of having no home due to colonization, trauma and/or whose social, cultural, economic, and political conditions place them in poverty. Having no home includes: those who alternate between shelter and unsheltered, living on the street, couch surfing, using emergency shelters, living in unaffordable, inadequate, substandard and unsafe accommodations or living without the security of tenure; anyone regardless of age, released from facilities (such as hospitals, mental health and addiction treatment centers, prisons, transition houses), fleeing unsafe homes as a result of abuse in all its definitions, and any youth transitioning from all forms of care.

(Aboriginal Homelessness Steering Committee, 2019, as reported to the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness and included in the Reaching Home Directives).

• Federally funded and administered through the Labrador Friendship Centre.
• Provincial in scope.
• Serving off-reserve Indigenous people, regardless of their status or origin, who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness in Newfoundland and Labrador.
• The Regional Advisory Board (RAB) now issuing a Call for Proposals with $1,394,391.85 available over a 1 year period for capital projects and/or services to reduce homelessness for Indigenous people to be expended by March 31, 2026.

1. Housing Services.
2. Prevention & Shelter Diversion.
3. Client Support.
4. Capital Investment Projects.

Eligible recipients for Indigenous Homelessness funding include:

• Not-for-profit organizations;
• For-profit organizations (may be eligible provided that the nature and intent of the activity is non-commercial; not intended to generate profit; based on fair market value; in support of program priorities and objectives; and in line with the community plan (or with identified local need where community plans are not required);
• Indigenous organizations (Indigenous organizations may include, but are not limited to, incorporated for-profit and not-for-profit Indigenous controlled organizations, Indigenous controlled unincorporated associations, Indian Act Bands, Tribal Councils and Indigenous self-government entities); and,
• Municipalities.

1. Prepare your application package, which will include:

• An application form (download below);
• Letters of support from the community, if any;
• Budget negotiation notes (download below);
• Sustainabilty checklist (download below)

2. Return your documents by email to the Housing Manager (contact information below).

• Application Form for Projects (PDF file)
• RHINL Budget Negotiation Notes 2024 (XLS file)
• Sustainabilty Checklist & Guide for Applicants of Capital Development Projects (PDF file)
• RHINL Application Guide 2025-26 (PDF file)

Please review the Application Guide for help in preparing your application package.

All inquiries and application submissions are to be directed to Heather Mehmet, Project Officer at the Labrador Friendship Centre.

Heather Mehmet
hmehmet@labradorfriendshipcentre.ca
Tel. 709-896-8302, ext. 215