June 15, 2021
Like many people, Priscilla Johnstone did not always know what kind of work she wanted to do when she got older. As a child, she dreamt about being a cop. As a young adult, she worked in the health sector. Now, she works as the Homelessness Action Plan Manager at the Saskatoon Housing Initiative Partnership (SHIP). While her current job is not where she thought she would end up, in many ways, her previous work experience and her lived experience make her the ideal person for the work that she is now doing.
Johnstone joined SHIP, an organization that provides consultation, research services, and front-line support to groups developing affordable housing, in September 2020. At SHIP, Johnstone is working on the implementation of coordinated access and the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS), which is part of the federal government’s Reaching Home homelessness strategy program.
Reaching Home was designed to support the goals of the federal government’s National Housing Strategy, which was introduced in 2017 with the aim of advancing the right to housing and addressing a range of housing needs, from shelters and community housing to affordable rental and homeownership.
A large part of Johnstone’s job is making sure that SHIP’s work has an Indigenous lens. In Saskatoon, this is particularly important.
In the 2018 Point-in-Time Homelessness Count, 85.5 percent of the homeless population identified as Indigenous.
“Because the Indigenous homeless population is so high, we want to be able to focus on and come from an Indigenous lens and an Indigenous perspective on why some of those issues are recurring,” Johnstone says. “Basically, I want to be able to provide insight into the historical reasons as to why there are a lot of reasons surrounding homelessness for Indigenous people.”
Johnstone works closely with Derek Rope from Medicine Rope Strategies in Saskatoon. Together, they have worked with survivors from residential schools – a group of more than 90 from Saskatoon and the surrounding area – on “the best way to engage Indigenous elders and knowledge keepers on how to tackle the housing issues,” she says.
“There is a lot of talk about Indigenous inclusion and [coming at things] from an Indigenous lens and collaboration moving forward, but there is difficulty in the sense as to what is the appropriate way to have engagement,” she says. “Here in Saskatoon, we have multiple demographics of Indigenous people; we have First Nations, we have Métis, and some Inuit. Because those different values and views come into place, there needs to be more of a collaboration piece moving forward, so that all voices are heard.”
Johnstone is working to bring forth an Indigenous framework for Indigenous inclusion following the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the recommendations from the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry.
“When I think of the magnitude of that stuff, it’s enormous,” Johnstone says.
Still, because of her own experience, she remains hopeful.
Johnstone’s mother went to a residential school. Her father went to a day school.
“Our family had a lot of domestic violence and alcoholism in my younger years. In my childhood we spent a lot of time running from shelter to shelter because of the domestic violence situation that had occurred in my home,” Johnstone shares. “We moved around all the time, from on reserve to urban settings. Back and forth, back and forth.”
Johnstone’s “saving grace”, she says, was that “because of my experience with my mom going back and forth to shelters and talking to counsellors, at a young age, I started reaching out to guidance counsellors. So, I learned how to build those mechanisms of support and how to navigate through those traumas and addictions and violence in the home and to move past it.”
Breaking cycles of trauma, however, is hard, and it took some starts and stops, Johnstone admits.
“I was a teenage mom. I dropped out of high school in Grade 10. I had my first child when I was 17. Single mom,” she says. “I really struggled.”
She credits a work placement program for helping her turn around her life for good. Through the program, she got her GED and started working as a practicum student in the health sector, eventually working there for 10 years.
After completing her diploma in addictions, she came across a mentorship opportunity with the Regina Police Service for Indigenous people to learn about policing through a two-week trial and decided to apply on a whim.
“I wasn’t even there for like three days and I was like ‘absolutely, I want to do this,’” she says.
That two-week trial led to a nine-year career in the police services.
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a police officer,” she explains. “But I gave up on that because I didn’t finish school and because I was a teenage mom, so I thought that would never happen for me.”
Working as a police officer had a huge impact on Johnstone.
“I worked in an urban setting for policing, as well as a First Nations setting. I saw first-hand human beings at their worst, and the biggest things that I saw were issues of social injustices that create addictions and just how everything kind of perpetuates itself. Most crimes happen because of lack of,” she says.
“Those values and beliefs that I have learned from that policing perspective, as well as when I worked in health, those are the foundations that have helped me in regard to the work that I am doing right now because I have that complete understanding of how those situations impact individuals and families,” Johnstone says. “And my goal is just to be an advocate moving forward. So, that is what makes me hopeful.”
Johnstone is also buoyed by the increasing openness of the federal government to engage with Indigenous Peoples.
Reaching Home, the federal program that supports Johnstone’s work at SHIP, specifically speaks about the government’s commitment to “achieving reconciliation with Indigenous peoples” by “engaging with National Indigenous Organizations and Indigenous service providers” and working together to develop an approach on how to allocate funding, which is a great start.
“Our government has brought the conversations back to the community level of First Nations people, as well as Inuit and Métis to have a voice, so that in and of itself makes me hopeful. That they are willing to listen, they are willing to work with, they are willing to walk with…” says Johnstone.
While Johnstone feels that the government has made progress in how it engages with Indigenous people, she says that more can be done at all levels of government. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the Indigenous housing crisis as people struggle with unexpected job loss and ongoing housing unaffordability. Indigenous advocates and supporters are calling on the federal government to provide long-term funding for an Urban Indigenous Housing Strategy created by Indigenous people for Indigenous people living in cities.
Johnstone hopes that as “Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing are slowly starting to make their way” into Western approaches, that we also learn from COVID-19 and continue to take more collective and partnership approaches to solving major issues like the housing crisis.
“There is no way we would be able to mitigate and work through this pandemic if there wasn’t collaboration and doing this community work together as a whole. I think [more people would have died] if we hadn’t worked together collectively through multi-organizations and multi-sectors and multi-jurisdictions,” she says.
Johnstone recently attended a workshop organized by CCHR and the Social Rights Advocacy Centre in partnership with the National Right to Housing Network that brought together different organizations from the Prairies to discuss intersectional challenges and solutions to key housing challenges in the region. Workshops like these are “fundamental in terms of the work and moving together,” she says.
“To bring systemic changes, one person can’t do it by themselves. One community can’t do it by themselves. It needs to be a collective.”
Priscilla Johnstone
The next regional workshop will take place in September and bring together housing advocates, community leaders, and people with lived experience to discuss the systemic issues faced by tenants in the North.
2020 was a difficult year.
In January, we came off a history-making year that saw both the Government of Canada and the City of Toronto recognize the right to housing and commit to taking a rights-based approach in their housing policy. We had been gearing up to continue pushing the right to housing agenda forward when the world changed in March with the outbreak of COVID-19.
As we near the end of 2020, thousands of people are facing potential eviction and homelessness as the pandemic rages on. Realizing the right to adequate, accessible and affordable housing has never been more urgent or essential.
Here we take stock of some of the biggest right to housing developments of 2020.
1. COVID-19 deeply impacted renters and people experiencing homelessness
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated economic and social inequalities across the world, and the impacts on renters have been significant. Like many countries, Canada has been in the midst of a deepening housing crisis for years, and the context was already bleak when the pandemic arrived. When several provinces went into lockdown in March, thousands of renters who lost their job or income were suddenly struggling to pay rent and vulnerable to eviction as a result.
Provincial moratoriums on eviction were swiftly put in place in March, and while these measures provided some initial relief from an immediate threat of eviction, they were ultimately short-lived. One by one, moratoriums were lifted prematurely, in some provinces as early as May, even though thousands had not yet recovered their income or employment. Since then, advocates have called for a moratorium to be reinstated, including in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Ontario came close when a motion was unanimously passed by the Legislature on December 8, and now all eyes are on Premier Doug Ford to sign an executive order to implement the moratorium. For months, advocates in Ontario also raised the alarm over serious human rights and justice issues at the Landlord and Tenant Board, as thousands of eviction hearings have been rushed through and some people have lost their homes in a matter of minutes.
Meanwhile, people experiencing homelessness were also uniquely impacted by the pandemic, as shelters reduced the number of beds available to follow physical distancing requirements. The congregate settings in shelters led some people to look for other environments to sleep that they considered safer, like in encampments which sprung up in city parks and other outdoor spaces across the country. In response, municipalities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, and London sought solutions to keep people safe and housed during the pandemic, moving hundreds of people living in homelessness into vacant hotels, modular housing and other temporary housing.
Hearing reports from the ground of safety, human rights and justice concerns in encampments and evictions across Toronto, advocates with R2HTO (the Right to Housing Toronto Network) provided the City with recommendations to align its approaches with its commitment to realize the right to housing.
2. The National Housing Strategy inched forward
The Government of Canada made several announcements related to housing and homelessness in their highly-anticipated Speech from the Throne on September 23. Among these announcements were new details about the government’s funding commitments, including a goal to accelerate the creation of 3,000 affordable housing units across the country by March 2021 – a critical addition to the housing stock that will be made through the Rapid Housing Initiative.
Another signal that the federal government is making progress on its National Housing Strategy was through the appointment of Canada’s first National Housing Council, announced on November 22. The Council has a mandate to advance the government’s housing policy and National Housing Strategy, which includes the progressive realization of the right to housing.
At the same time, the federal government launched its search to fill a key position with a mandate to advance the National Housing Strategy – the Federal Housing Advocate. This position will be responsible for monitoring, assessing, reporting, and making recommendations on the right to housing across Canada. This is a new role which has yet to be filled, and the government is currently seeking qualified candidates with applications due on December 30, 2020.
3. New legislation in Ontario weakened tenants’ rights
In July 2020 the Ontario government passed Bill 184, which makes several amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act. Housing advocates raised concerns about the negative impacts that this bill will have on tenants and their rights, which we know will be disproportionally felt by marginalized Ontarians – individuals who are low-income, racialized, newcomers to Canada, youth, and persons with disabilities.
Bill 184 weakens tenants’ rights and makes it easier to evict people by effectively stripping protections from tenants and undermining access to justice. Amendments under Bill 184 also impact tenants financially and widen the power imbalance between landlords and renters.
In a time when tenants need support from our governments the most, this new legislation makes life tangibly more difficult for already-disadvantaged individuals. This bill also made it all the more evident that Ontario renters have remained a low policy priority once again this year.
4. The City of Toronto reinforced its commitment to the right to housing, and we are still waiting for a Housing Commissioner
In December 2019 we celebrated the City of Toronto becoming the first municipality in Canada to commit to a rights-based approach in its housing policy. Nine months later, the City released its HousingTO Implementation Plan 2020-2030 containing the first details of how it intends to address affordable housing and homelessness over the next ten years.
One laudable goal in their plan is the creation of 40,000 new affordable housing units in the city with specific targets to provide affordable housing for individuals most in need, including people experiencing homelessness, youth, seniors, people with physical and developmental disabilities, indigenous households, and girls- and women-led households.
While the City’s plan is a good next step to realize its commitments, key details including timelines and concrete dates, as well as additional resources, are needed to better understand how and when the City will reach the targets it has set for itself. We have identified the good and the gaps that we’ll be keeping an eye on as plans continue taking shape in 2021.
We had also hoped the City would establish the Office of the Housing Commissioner in 2020, which is a centerpiece of the City’s HousingTO plan. The purpose of the Housing Commissioner is to hold the City accountable to its commitment to realize the right to housing. The timeline has been pushed back to 2021, and we are eagerly awaiting news on how this office will take shape and to see a budget commitment made to support its work. Ensuring independent accountability for a rights-based approach to housing policy could not be more urgent as the City continues to respond to an unprecedented global pandemic that has disproportionately affected some of our most marginalized citizens.
5. New seeds were planted to claim the right to housing across Canada
In the fall, CCHR and the National Right to Housing Network kicked off a new initiative working with communities across Canada to identify systemic violations of the right to housing, propose solutions and influence systemic changes in the housing landscape. Policy advocates, community leaders and lived experts across the country came together for two online working group meetings, contributing their collective knowledge and experience to propose solutions to address the deepening housing crisis facing so many communities.
These meetings planted new seeds that will support communities to engage with and benefit from rights-based housing policy, in particular the National Housing Strategy. Stay tuned for opportunities to engage in this initiative in 2021.
2020 has been a challenging year. The impacts of COVID-19 have pushed housing issues to the forefront while the housing and evictions crisis escalated to new heights.
As many Canadians continue to grapple with income loss, financial instability and housing insecurity, 2021 will be a crucial year to advance the right to housing. At CCHR, we’ll continue working with communities, advocates and governments to push this important agenda forward and we hope you will join us in this work.
For much of the year, our homes have been our whole worlds. It’s where many of us worked, shopped, had Zoom calls with friends and family, and helped our kids get through math class. While some Canadians were adjusting to doing nearly everything from home, others were suddenly facing the possibility of losing theirs through a traumatizing life event – eviction.
Two million Ontarians lost their jobs or their income when the province went into lockdown. At CCHR, we have fielded countless stories of how this has affected the ability of people in our communities to pay their rent.
Like Sebastian, who fell behind on rent after suddenly losing his job in April. He called CCHR in a panic when his landlord told him to pay up or immediately move his family out.
Or Jin, who was laid off in May and was terrified by a threatening eviction notice. She didn’t understand the law and didn’t know where to go for help, until she found our hotline.
Then there’s Ana, who faced the impossible choice of feeding her kids or paying her rent after her work hours were cut in half. Paralyzed with fear and anxiety at the prospect of losing her home, she called CCHR in desperation just the day before her eviction hearing.
Fortunately, our case workers were there to take Sebastian, Jin and Ana’s calls, informing them about their rights, how the eviction process works, and connecting them with legal assistance, financial aid, and counselling services.
We field calls from dozens of people in similar circumstances each month, guiding 90% of them to a positive outcome. In the past two months, the number of people we’ve heard from has doubled, overwhelming our capacity to respond. We are now deeply worried we won’t be able to help hundreds more keep their homes as the pandemic carries on.
The Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) has a long history of developing and driving forward precedent-setting litigation.
When we were known as the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA), we represented clients across Canada and acted in an advisory capacity on many ground-breaking legal challenges to policies and practices that denied disadvantaged groups access to housing, including:
CCHR also led a coalition of organizations, and served as a plaintiff on Tanudjaja, the historic challenge against the federal and provincial governments for violations of section 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The case argued that governments created and maintained conditions that lead to and sustain homelessness and inadequate housing.
Across our history, CCHR has promoted interpretations and applications of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to address rights violations faced by disadvantaged groups in need of housing. In this regard, CCHR worked in collaboration with the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues (CCPI), a national committee of low-income people and legal experts that advanced the rights of impoverished persons in Canada. CCHR assisted CCPI in test case litigation involving particularly marginalized groups.
CCHR also coordinated CCPI’s intervention at the Supreme Court of Canada in Gosselin v Québec (Attorney General), [2002] 4 SCR 429 – the only Charter case to date in which the Court had the opportunity to consider the extent to which section 7 of the Charter places obligations on governments to provide an adequate level of social assistance to prevent homelessness and its adverse effects.
CCHR also coordinated CCPI’s intervention in the case of New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v G. (J.), [1999] 3 SCR 46 which dealt with access to legal aid for those living in poverty; Baker v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1999] 2 SCR 817, on the status of international human rights law in the exercise of administrative discretion; Eldridge v British Columbia (Attorney General), [1997] 3 SCR 624 on positive obligations to address needs of disadvantaged groups under section 15 of the Charter; Thibaudeau v Canada, [1995] 2 SCR 627 on the rights of single mothers; Walker v Prince Edward Island, [1995] 2 SCR 407 and R. v Prosper, [1994] 3 SCR 236 on the right to state-funded counsel for impoverished accused; and Symes v Canada, [1993] 4 SCR 695 on the application of section 15 to socio-economic policies and taxation.
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