Homelessness is one of Canada’s fastest-growing social challenges, and Ivey students are applying managerial accounting tools to help respond. In London, Ont., where the number of people experiencing homelessness has risen 377 per cent since 2018, students in the HBA Managerial Accounting and Control course are working with community partners to better understand the economic realities and support the city’s response.
For the second year in a row, the class has partnered with the Centre for Research on Health Equity and Social Inclusion (CRHESI) through London’s Whole of Community Response to Homelessness (WCR). Yi Luo, Assistant Professor in Managerial Accounting and Control, who teaches the course with Yaqi Shi, says the goal is to show students how managerial accounting can contribute to social good.
“We need to teach students relevant issues that they can apply to work and hopefully for good purposes,” she said. “I really hope they can contribute back to the community where they’ve spent formative years of their lives.”
Building the partnership
The collaboration grew out of early conversations between CRHESI and Ivey faculty. Luo credits Ivey Professor Lauren Cipriano, HBA '05, for helping to initiate the partnership and providing mentorship.
Eleanor Gebrou, Research and Evaluation Manager at CRHESI, said the centre welcomed the chance to involve business students in its costing work.
“We saw a valuable opportunity to collaborate with Ivey students and bring fresh, specialized perspectives to the analysis… Their optimism, creativity, and diverse ways of thinking help us see possibilities others may overlook,” she said. “This partnership also creates space for students to consider costing through a public-sector and governance lens… we hope to foster informed, civically engaged future leaders.”
Last year, the students estimated that homelessness costs the city more than $100,000 per person each year.
This year’s assignment builds on that foundation by examining how homelessness affects local businesses in the downtown and Old East Village neighbourhoods.
Learning from real-world complexity
Unlike textbook cases, this project required students to work with uneven, imperfect data.
“Here, they need to look for information, screen it, and state assumptions. It illustrates how unstructured the real world is,” Luo said.
HBA student Cem Ozden said he hadn’t expected a managerial accounting project to address a social issue unfolding outside the classroom.
“Usually in accounting classes, you don’t really do too many real-world challenges, especially something that hits so close to home,” he said. “Once we started, it felt impactful. This is exactly what we should be doing with our degree.”
Identifying business pressures
The students examined the financial pressures homelessness creates for local businesses.
For Evelyn So, the experience highlighted the capacity gap many community organizations face.
“A lot of nonprofits don’t have the ability to hire consultants. We’re doing something that to us seems very basic as a school project, but for them it is expertise they don’t have access to,” she said. “I hope our project this year will have a similar level of impact to last year's.”
Applying business tools to social issues
Howard Yu said the assignment connected directly to concepts discussed in class.
“It ties to everything we’ve covered – the different ways we can incentivize different stakeholders to act differently,” he said. “It also gives me perspective about what opportunities are out there and how I can make these changes.”
Taylor Mason, a dual degree HBA and Health Sciences student, said the project brought together two worlds she hadn’t expected to see intersect so directly.
“It was literally seeing my two degrees come together before my eyes,” she said.
The assignment also broadened her thinking about future career paths.
“It taught me that you don’t have to take the traditional investment banking path… you could do philanthropic work with finances and really make a difference in your community,” she said. “As a student, you sometimes feel disconnected – that your actions don’t really make the biggest impact. Having something beyond just grades coming out of this project makes it meaningful.”
Jackey Lai, who is passionate about sustainability and social impact, said it reinforced the kind of work he hopes to do.
“Being able to tie in homelessness to businesses – to quantitatively show them the impact of homelessness and use data-driven recommendations to drive change – that’s the impact I hope to make,” he said.
For Nisa Qureshi, the project showed how accounting tools can influence people’s lives.
“You can actually see the people struggling every day that you’d be able to help,” she said. “It helps students realize their little ideas can make a difference.”
What the students proposed
Since this year’s analysis is still underway, the students’ findings will be shared with CRHESI as research continues. Last year’s project, which examined the annual cost of homelessness per person in London, produced a range of accounting-informed ideas that helped shape community discussions. Those recommendations included:
- Approaches for organizations to track and report homelessness-related costs more consistently;
- Incentive structures to encourage collaboration between service providers and the city;
- Management controls to reduce burnout among front-line workers; and,
- Digital concepts to streamline service navigation and data collection for WCR.
The students also suggested a tiny homes model and created a prototype app – ideas that later appeared in public conversations about potential solutions.
Strengthening the city’s homelessness response
CRHESI will use the students’ findings to inform an upcoming survey and the next phase of its community-focused research.
“By sharing their methods and explaining their decision-making, the students help broaden how we think about costing within the homelessness sector,” Gebrou said. “At the same time, engaging academic partners grounds students’ learning in real-world, urgent issues. Ultimately, this collaboration enhances our collective ability to respond thoughtfully and effectively to homelessness.”
A model for business education with purpose
Luo sees the project as an example of how experiential learning can develop leaders who understand the societal implications of business decisions.
“Behind the numbers are people,” she said.
For students like Qureshi, that lesson is already clear.
“If we can make a good step here in Ontario, where the problem is so apparent, then maybe that can spark change elsewhere too,” she said.
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