• Expand the supply of non-market, community housing, including rent-geared-to-income units, to help improve housing access and stability, and reduce evictions, especially for tenants who rely on a fixed income.
• Improve and expand rental assistance programs to ensure they are reflective of current market rents and indexed to inflation to help lower-income tenants in private market rental housing maintain their tenancies.
• Advocate to the provincial government to reintroduce vacancy control to remove the financial incentive to evict long-term tenants paying below market rents and extend rent control to all rental units (including those first occupied after November 15, 2018) to prevent excessive rent increases that lead to economic evictions.

• Ensure the new multi-tenant housing framework is equitably implemented. The City of Toronto needs to make sure that the new multi-tenant housing framework ensures quality standards for multi-tenant housing (rooming houses) equitably and does not lead to the displacement of current residents.
• Strengthen and expand rental replacement policies. To protect tenants who are at risk of being evicted because of the renovation, demolition, or conversion of the rental unit they live in, the City must ensure that tenants are adequately compensated. The City must also extend restrictions on rent increases for replacement units.
• Improve and expand the RentSafeTO program. The City must make sure that tenants’ living conditions are improved and that they will not be forced out of their homes because of poor maintenance and safety conditions.
• Improve the Tower Renewal Program. The City must continue to strengthen its Tower Renewal Program to repair and improve older apartment buildings to preserve existing affordable housing for lower-income tenants.
• Expand the Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program: The City should increase funding for the MURA program to continue to protect existing affordable housing and provide the maximum impact for lower-income tenants.

The City should prioritize tenant outreach and education related to relevant city policies, programs, and supports for tenants, including by connecting tenants to community organizations that provide legal support and education on tenants’ legal rights.

The City should dedicate funding to support the investigation of informal evictions and to collect data on tenants’ experiences. This information can be used to guide the creation of City policies that can reduce informal evictions and advance the right to housing.

To discourage bad faith evictions, the City should advocate for legislative changes at the provincial level, such as requiring landlords to provide building permits to be able to use N13 eviction notices, in addition to implementing its own bylaw with a robust framework and adequate support for displaced tenants.

The City of Toronto should increase funding for the Rent Bank, Eviction Prevention in the Community (EPIC), and Housing Stabilization Fund (HSF) programs and other initiatives that help prevent evictions. The Rent Bank program should continue to operate as a grant-based program to help tenants who are behind on rent or who need financial assistance with a rental deposit. Investing more in programs that prevent evictions can reduce the number of evictions and help tenants stay in their homes for the long term.

1.  Data collection should include disaggregated and intersectional qualitative and quantitative data that facilitates the development of evidence-based responses to the homelessness crisis from the city by informing funding, programming, service delivery and policymaking.

2.  A city-wide approach should include community organizations, service providers, people with lived experience, Indigenous organizations and governments, and officials from the City of Saskatoon.

3.  Adequate mechanisms should be in place to properly account for less visible forms of homelessness, such as hidden homelessness, people who are institutionally housed, etc.

4.  Data collection efforts should ensure the participation of marginalized and/or hard-to-reach populations, such as Indigenous people, people with disabilities, youth, women, gender-diverse individuals, and survivors of gender-based violence.

5.  Collection efforts should minimize the burden on people with lived experience, reduce the number of times information is requested from them, use a trauma-informed lens, and have a gender-sensitive approach.

6.  Data collection strategies should ensure the right to privacy and confidentiality for those who provide information, especially for individuals in high-risk scenarios, such as survivors of gender-based violence. 

1.  Funds should provide adequate resources to develop the necessary infrastructure for a comprehensive system to capture data on all forms of homelessness with emphasis on reaching hard to reach populations.

2.  The funding strategy must ensure that data collection efforts remain operable over the long term.
    
3.  Barriers to access these funds by First Nations and Métis organizations and governments, as well as other relevant stakeholders must be identified and addressed to ensure meaningful participation from all relevant parties.

4.  Funds should be available to appropriately compensate individuals with lived experience, whose knowledge and expertise are critical to developing these systems. Funds should also be available to address barriers to participation for hard-to-reach populations, such as lack of childcare and transit access.  

1.  All key organizations and institutions at the municipal level responding to the needs of people experiencing street-level and hidden homelessness should have access to the HIFIS to improve the enumeration of these experiences and provide regular updates.

2.  Data collection forms should include hidden homelessness and other forms of homelessness as disaggregated categories to create differentiated data that supports policy and programming changes that are sensitive to the unique needs of different groups.
   
3.  Where possible, data collection should rely on people being able to self-identify their housing status to avoid stigmatization and bias. 

1.  This review should focus on provincial and municipal public institutions and ministries that provide housing, supports for homelessness and other related services, such as the Ministry of Social Services, Child and Family Services and the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
    
2.  Institutions should capture information on less visible forms of homelessness, such as hidden homelessness, through existing data collection methods (intake forms, records, surveys, etc.).

3.  Special effort should be put into capturing information on homelessness and housing precarity of vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations (for example Indigenous people, women and gender-diverse individuals, youth, people with disability, survivors of gender-based violence).

4.  Improved data sharing between institutions, decision-makers, and community organizations should be a key goal of this review, to ensure the consistency and reliability of data, and to leverage this information to create evidence-based policies, programs, and services. 

1.  Data should be available for all relevant stakeholders to inform their decision-making processes and service delivery in a way that protects the information of people who are experiencing homelessness.

2.  Regular monitoring and reporting mechanisms should be established to ensure up-to-date information is available for decision-making at all levels of government, as well as for community organizations.   

1.  Municipal, provincial and federal governments, in collaboration with Indigenous governments, should adequately fund and support the development and implementation of Indigenous-led data strategies.
    
2.  Data collection strategies should be designed in collaboration with Indigenous communities, and data collection efforts should be led by Indigenous communities themselves.

3.  Indigenous communities must retain ownership and control over the data, including its use by other orders of government and service providers.

4.  Data sovereignty and ownership, control, access, and possession (OCAP) should be respected to ensure rights-based collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions.  

1. The Census of Population should include questions that capture data on hidden homelessness.

2. The federal government should collaborate with provinces to develop innovative ways to obtain data on hidden homelessness, such as PiT counts and other data collection strategies.
   
   
3. The federal government should collaborate with provinces and municipalities to leverage all information collected regarding all forms of homelessness to ensure that decision-making is informed by reliable, updated, and high-quality data on all forms of homelessness.
   
4. Best practices within Canada, as well as from other countries, should be considered to better estimate all forms of homelessness. 

National:  

• Blueprint  
• Employment and Social Development Canada   
• Infrastructure Canada  

Provincial:   

• Coordinated Access – Métis Nation Saskatchewan  
• Saskatchewan Health Authority  

Municipal:   

• Chokecherry Studios 
• Christians Against Poverty Saskatoon Branch  
• City of Saskatoon  
• Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon Inner City Inc. (CLASSIC)  
• Emergency Wellness Centre Saskatoon Tribal Council 
• Friendship Inn  
• OUTSaskatoon   
• Prairie Harm Reduction  
• Pride Home 
• Quint Development Corporation  
• Salvation Army Saskatoon  
• Saskatchewan Intercultural Association 
• Saskatoon Fire Department  
• Saskatoon Food Bank & Learning Centre  
• Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership
• Saskatoon Poverty Reduction Partnership  
• Saskatoon Public Library  
• Saskatoon Tribal Council  
• University of Saskatchewan  
• YWCA Saskatoon  

1. Cara Bahr, Chief Executive Officer – YWCA Saskatoon
2. Chantelle Johnson, Executive Director – Community Legal Assistance for Saskatoon Inner City (CLASSIC)
3. Debbie McGraw, Co-Chair of the Canadian Lived Experience Leadership Network
4. Geoffrey Peters, Director – Cress Housing Corporation – Saskatoon Tribal Council
5. Isobel Findlay, University Co-Director – Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR), University of Saskatchewan
6. Lydia Moss, Senior Manager – Saskatoon Public Library 
7. Michael Kowalchuk, Senior Planner – City of Saskatoon
8. Obadiah Awume, Planner – City of Saskatoon
9. Sandra Kary, Executive Director – Friendship Inn
10.    Sarah Buhler, Associate Professor – College of Law and CUISR, University of Saskatchewan 

• Increase the supply of social housing: The federal and provincial governments should create more social housing that is protected from market forces and provides permanent and sustainable affordable housing, with rents that are subsidized to ensure affordability based on income, and not at market rates that are also out of reach for many survivors. These units must also be adequate and suitable for different family compositions to protect families from instances where children are apprehended by children’s aid societies due to unsuitable housing. Indigenous households and households that are run by single parents with disabilities experience disproportionately high rates of child apprehension based on unsuitable housing. Although some recent federal funding announcements in the Canada Housing Plan presented in April 2024 are meant to support affordable housing, the majority of the funding is directed towards private market incentives intended to build more housing that will not be affordable to communities most in need, such as people fleeing a context of GBV/IPV.  
   
  In addition to more investments in social housing, all levels of government must collaborate to ensure that more affordable and non-profit housing options are created. The provincial government should work with municipalities to encourage the development of non-profit and co-operative housing to provide more affordable housing options for lower-income households. 

• Attach affordability requirements to funding for private sector developers: Most of the federal government’s recent funding commitments have been directed towards the private market to build more supply, following the logic that the creation of more housing supply will lower rental prices. However, studies have shown that more rental supply does not guarantee more affordable housing. We therefore recommend that government support for private sector rental housing development be conditional on affordability requirements that are co-developed with affected groups and that meet the needs of lower-income renters. 

• Expand programs that preserve affordable housing: It is estimated that for every affordable unit that is created in Canada, 16 affordable units are lost. The federal government should expand programs to preserve affordable housing. This includes the Canada Rental Protection Fund which was recently announced to support non-profit organizations and other partners in identifying and purchasing affordable private market buildings at risk of rent increases and renter displacement, so that they can maintain tenancies and keep rents affordable in those units over the long term. 

• Amend the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) to increase affordability: Ontario has some rent regulation measures in place, however there are significant exemptions that apply to residential units that were first occupied after November 15, 2018. For those units, landlords can increase the rent for existing tenants on a yearly basis by amount they like. In addition, vacancy decontrol allows landlords to increase the rent for new tenants by any amount they like. These current measures contribute to the lack of affordable housing options. To address this issue in the short term, legislative changes should be made to the RTA to remove the exemption to rent regulation, and implement vacancy control measures, so that rents can be affordable for renters when they rent a new unit and remain affordable in the long term. 

• Address the financialization of housing: The financialization of housing is a key driver of the housing affordability crisis. Measures should be implemented to address the financialization of housing and real estate speculation, including a targeted capital gains tax, rigorous affordability requirements for newly acquired rental housing, prevention of renovictions and unwarranted rent increases, restrictions on large-scale acquisitions of rental housing stock, and providing the right of first refusal of any purchase of rental housing to local governments or non-profit organizations who will develop social or affordable housing. 

• Fund targeted programs for women and gender-diverse people, while reducing barriers to access: When the National Housing Strategy (NHS) was launched in 2017, it incorporated a gender-based analysis plus lens (GBA+) and identified women and children fleeing violence as a prioritized group. At the time, the federal government made a commitment to dedicate 25 per cent of NHS investments to housing initiatives for women and girls. Seven years into the implementation of the NHS, significant gender equity gaps have been found in the investments and programs, and programs have largely failed to meet the needs of women and gender-diverse people fleeing violence.  
   
  For example, the largest funding program, now called the Apartment Construction Loan Program, has not set any specific requirements that any amount of funding be dedicated to providing housing for women and girls. There are no funding programs that target women and people fleeing GBV/IPV, while only two of the NHS funding programs mention housing for vulnerable populations. These programs have therefore failed to meet the housing needs of women and women-led families. 
   
  Other issues include a lack of investment in emergency homeless shelters and beds for women and gender-diverse people across the country, with the majority of funding invested in men’s shelters. Small organizations, non-profits, housing providers and service providers that focus on women have also reported barriers in accessing capital investment programs that are available. Barriers include being unaware of the funding available, the prohibitive cost of applying for funding, or not being eligible for funding due to existing agreements with the province or territory. These organizations have the best understanding of the needs of the women and gender-diverse people they serve, and these barriers limit their ability to expand their support and housing. The federal government’s recently announced Housing Action Plan did not include targeted funding programs for women and gender-diverse people.  
   
  To address these issues, programs under the NHS need to be redesigned to include funding streams that target the creation of genuinely affordable housing that meets the needs of women and gender-diverse people, womenled households, and women and gender-diverse people who are fleeing GBV/ IPV. Barriers that prevent organizations from accessing existing funding should be removed and the application processes must be streamlined. Investments in emergency shelters and shelter beds for women and gender-diverse people need to be increased.

• Expand funding and criteria for the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB): The COHB was launched in 2020 to support households experiencing housing need. The amounts given under the benefit have long been insufficient, and that is especially the case now as people contend with higher housing and food costs.7 People have also reported experiencing limited access to the benefit and facing barriers accessing rental housing when using it. Benefit levels should be increased to meet the actual need of households. It is also recommended that the program be made more accessible and the criteria more flexible. Specifically, people should be allowed to remain on the waitlist for subsidized housing while they access the COHB, and recipients of social assistance should have access to COHB. Finally, the federal and provincial governments, who jointly fund COHB, should commit to funding the program for a specific period, to provide survivors with clarity on how long they can expect to receive the benefit and prepare for when they will stop receiving it. 

• Change the definition of homelessness in current programs to include hidden homelessness and survivors who are unable to leave contexts in which they are experiencing GBV/IPV: Canada’s largest funding program to address homelessness, called Reaching Home, has prioritized addressing chronic homelessness. Chronic homelessness focuses on measuring homelessness data based on shelter occupancy, visible homelessness, and people not having a permanent address for a period of time. This definition does not capture the hidden homelessness that survivors experience to high degrees either before or after accessing emergency shelters. It also does not include survivors who are forced to remain in residences in which they are experiencing violence because there is nowhere else for them to go. Reaching Home and other government programs should change the definition of homelessness to include hidden homelessness and survivors who are forced to remain in housing with their abusers, so that the programming reflects the lived experience of survivors. This would enable survivors’ needs to be addressed and for them to access the services and benefits currently reserved for people experiencing chronic homelessness.

• Increase investments in existing services: More funding should be provided to existing shelters and services to address challenges serving people fleeing GBV/ IPV, such as difficulties with staff retention due to inadequate pay and burn out, and a lack of beds and space to host beds. 

• Create second-stage shelters in smaller communities: The research showed that in smaller communities, there are limited beds in violence against women (VAW) shelters, limited and in some instances no emergency shelters specific to women and gender-diverse people, and that women and gender-diverse people do not feel safe accessing co-ed shelters. Many gender-diverse people also do not feel safe accessing VAW shelters or women’s shelters. Further, in these communities there is limited second-stage shelter housing for survivors. While the long-term goal is to have affordable housing options so that people fleeing GBV/IPV can secure permanent safe housing, more second-stage shelters need to be created in smaller communities to address the interim and immediate needs of people who need to leave a situation in which they are experiencing GBV/IPV.

• Increase social assistance rates: Social assistance rates for the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and the Ontario Works (OW) program have not increased significantly in Ontario in many years and have not kept up with inflation or the actual cost of living. This is a barrier that prevents survivors from securing safe and affordable housing. Rates must be increased to provide benefit amounts that are commensurate with real housing costs.

• Reduce barriers in accessing social assistance: Survivors face barriers to accessing ODSP and OW. For example, survivors are sometimes arrested and charged when they respond to their abuser and defend themselves. While they are incarcerated, they stop receiving their benefit and may lose their housing as a result. Regulations must be changed to close this gap which can drive survivors into homelessness. Further, some individuals face barriers in accessing their benefits if they have not filed their taxes. Individuals who are particularly vulnerable should be able to access benefits if they have not completed their taxes so that they can address their immediate needs. Automatic tax filing programs should be considered for groups with higher needs. Though the federal government has introduced a limited automatic tax filing program (Majors 2024), the program should be made available to more communities in need.

• Amend the Special Priority Policy (SPP) application process: The report details how the onerous requirements of the SPP application process for subsidized housing creates barriers to accessing it. The application process should be amended to reflect the actual experiences and pathways taken by survivors to escape violence. This includes less onerous requirements around documentation, extending the timeframe within which people can apply beyond the current three months, and amending the criteria to reflect the instances in which a survivor may not have been living with an abuser but may still be unsafe in their current housing and need to leave.

• Reduce barriers to accessing subsidized housing: The research shows that the requirements for accessing subsidized housing create barriers to accessing housing for survivors. Changes should be made to remove these barriers, including not removing people from the waitlist if they do not update their information. People on the waitlist should be contacted if any information needs to be updated. The onus should not be on the survivors and other communities to update this information, and they should not be penalized by being removed from the waitlist as a result.

• Introduce safe at home programming: Given the risk of homelessness and precarious housing that women and gender-diverse people fleeing GBV/IPV experience, as well as the disruption to the lives of families and children, provincial governments should consider introducing “Safe at Home” programming. Through the combination of legal tools, wrap around supports and other safety measures, these programs work to remove the abuser from the home and allow the survivors and their families to remain housed and be safe. These programs have been successful in communities in the United Kingdom and Australia. The government should work with the necessary partners to explore introducing Safe at Home programming in communities in Ontario.

• Collect more data in rural and remote areas: The research shows that despite the high levels of homelessness in remote communities such as Lanark County, there are significant gaps in the data that provide information on the depth of housing and homelessness challenges. Data gathering is an important step in identifying the housing needs and homelessness challenges experienced by disadvantaged groups, including survivors. Strong and accurate data that reflects the experiences of women and gender-diverse people can help governments develop more targeted solutions and programming. Data collection methods and tools can be developed by local governments in partnership with local organizations serving communities. Data collection should be disaggregated based on gender, and collection methods should include women and gender diverse people who are experiencing hidden homelessness. Additionally, data collection within Indigenous communities should be Indigenous-led. 

• Establish monitoring and enforcement mechanisms: The provincial government should establish a system for monitoring, investigating, and meaningfully enforcing Human Rights Code protections related to housing. The role of the Rental Housing Enforcement Unit can be strengthened and expanded as part of this initiative.

• Provide no-fee guarantor services to support survivors: In many instances, a lack of credit history or guarantor acts as a barrier to survivors in accessing housing, especially in the instance that they have experienced financial abuse or if they are coming from an Indigenous reserve. Knowing this, the federal and provincial governments should establish no-fee guarantor services to support survivors in accessing housing in the private rental market.

• Investigate the scope of discrimination: The provincial government should fund and undertake initiatives to investigate the nature, scope, and impact of discriminatory housing practices against survivors and other equity-deserving groups across the province, to develop targeted programs and solutions.

• Restore funding to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario: The provincial government should increase funding to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to ensure that it can deal with complaints of discrimination in an adequate and timely manner. 

• Increase targeted services for groups in greatest need: This research reveals that there is a need for more services and shelters that target 2SLGBTQA+ people, newcomers, people with disabilities, and Indigenous women, particularly in remote and rural areas. The federal government’s Reaching Home funding stream can be used to create more specialized shelters and services. There is currently an Indigenous Homelessness stream within Reaching Home which funds Indigenous organizations located in urban centers, and some Self-Governing First Nations and national or regional representatives of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit. That program should be expanded to provide more support to Indigenous service providers, including in rural and remote areas. Although the federal government should prioritize creating permanent affordable and supportive housing that is accessible to survivors, investments in targeted emergency services are also needed to meet their urgent needs in the short term.  

• Increase accessible housing: The research has shown that survivors who require accessibility modifications in their housing due to a disability have fewer housing options in an unaffordable market. The federal and provincial governments must therefore invest more in creating accessible housing options that will also be affordable in the long term. For instance, this can be done at the federal level by including targets for accessible housing units in the funding streams for affordable housing. When the government invests in social housing, it should invest in the creation of new units that employ the principals of universal design. 

• Be alert to the experiences of Indigenous women and gender-diverse people: In developing solutions, policymakers must be alert to unique experiences of Indigenous women and gender-diverse people. Violence against Indigenous women is a major crisis in Canada, and they are more likely to experience violence than non-Indigenous women. Indigenous women and gender-diverse people experience structural violence because of settler-colonialism. Settler-colonial policies have created cultural disruptions that have resulted in an increased risk of GBV. These policies continue to be interwoven into today’s political and economic fabric. Indigenous People also experience disproportionately higher rates of homelessness and child apprehension by child welfare services. All of these factors affect how Indigenous women and gender-diverse people experience GBV/IPV and interact with existing programs and must be given special consideration in the development of policy solutions.  

• Increase investments in For Indigenous, By Indigenous housing: Given that Indigenous women and gender-diverse people are at a greater risk of experiencing GBV/IPV and homelessness and experience greater barriers to accessing affordable housing, more For Indigenous, By Indigenous housing is needed that is affordable and culturally adequate. The federal government has allocated $4.3 billion over seven years to an Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous housing strategy. More funds need to be invested in the strategy to truly meet the depth of housing need. It is estimated that $4.3 billion to $5.6 billion is needed per year over a period of 10 years to adequately meet the current Indigenous housing need after a long history of inadequate and inappropriate funding.