Setting a national standard on gender-sensitive and human rights approaches for emergency shelters

July 3, 2024

In Canada, women and gender-diverse people are more likely to have trouble finding a safe and secure place to live, and disproportionately live in core housing need. For those who experience homelessness, they are often denied access to emergency shelters that are operating over capacity and are struggling to meet demand due to chronic underfunding and an increase in housing need. Additionally, certain policies, rules and practices in emergency shelters may lead to people being turned away, separated from their children or unable to access supports.

To help address these challenges, the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN) developed a project, explored together with lived experts, advocates and shelter providers, that seeks to identify what shelters in Canada could look like if they were gender-sensitive and aligned with the right to housing. To transform emergency shelter service delivery for women and gender-diverse people, we developed and prototyped national shelter standards that use a rights-based and gender-sensitive approach. These standards can help to better meet the needs of women and gender-diverse people in accessing emergency shelter services. 

The Shelter Standards:

  • It is essential for shelter leadership and staff to engage meaningfully with residents and other lived experts to create pathways for agency.
  • Shelter leadership must ensure that all services offered at the shelter are accessible.
  • Shelter leadership and staff must respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people.
  • Shelter leadership and staff must ensure that residents of shelters have access to culturally safe services and supports.
  • Shelter leadership and staff must prohibit forced evictions into unsheltered homelessness.
  • Shelter leadership and staff must ensure shelter residents have access to basic needs.
  • Shelter leadership and staff must ensure processes for access to justice to claim the right to housing and other human rights.

Read the full report to get more detailed information about the National Shelter Standards, also available in French.

Additional resources:


National Shelter Standards Overview

This is a short version of the final report. It summarizes the development process and provides a high-level overview of the standards, along with recommendations for their successful implementation.



Government Relations Advocacy Toolkit

This toolkit provides recommendations for shelter providers to implement human rights-based and gender-sensitive standards. It also offers resources for shelter providers, advocates, and lived experts to advocate for the adoption of these standards at all levels of government.



Government Action Guide

This guide explains what human rights-based and gender-sensitive shelter standards are and how they can meaningfully help reduce homelessness of women and gender-diverse people. It provides recommendations to each level of government for the successful implementation of these standards.



How to Build on This Work

This report offers some lessons learned on the implementation of this Solutions Lab project  and provides a high-level roadmap to address some of the gaps identified and further explore successful processes that we used in the project.


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