Juha Kaakinen, CEO of Finland's largest housing non-profit, the Y-Foundation, has been working in the area of homelessness and social welfare since the 1980s. Kaakinen, the architect of Finland's national Housing First program, is renowned for promoting the principle that housing is a human right.

A passionate champion of innovative housing solutions, Kaakinen will discuss how Housing First became one of the world’s best approaches to ending homelessness. This bold initiative has reversed Finland’s homelessness crisis and has poised it to become one of the only European countries reducing and nearly eradicating homelessness within its border. His lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with St. Michael’s leading urban health experts to discuss how homelessness intersects with mental health and what it will take to upend Canada’s homelessness crisis.