The Canadian Centre for Housing Rights is proud to offer an innovative model that delivers rights-based educational training to supportive housing providers, frontline workers, peer supporters, and renters.
When renters who live in supportive housing know their legal rights, and supportive housing providers have the legal know-how to uphold those rights, together they build healthier and more resilient communities.
We offer the following two training and capacity-building models to introduce renters and supportive housing providers to the right to housing framework and rental housing laws:
Read about the human rights impact of this project.
This informational pamphlet details the responsibilities of federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments in Canada to work toward the progressive realization of the right to housing.
This pamphlet was produced by the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN).
This informational pamphlet outlines how governments can use the planning and development tools at their disposal to ensure that the right to adequate housing is realized. It also outlines key actions that governments should take to develop new approaches to planning and zoning to promote inclusive, vibrant communities that ensure adequate housing for all, and how individuals can engage in this process as well.
This pamphlet was produced by the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN).
This informational pamphlet examines the issue of renovations and upgrading that lead to evictions from rental housing, which denies people their right to security of tenure – a key component of the right to housing. We outline how “renovictions” are playing out across Canada, and how advancing the right to housing can help to address these issues.
This pamphlet was produced by the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN).
Stories of discrimination in rental housing are far too common in Canada. Many advocates have long pointed to discrimination in housing as a systemic issue caused by patterns of behavior, policies or practices that are a part of the structures of our society which put certain groups at a disadvantage.
What does systemic discrimination in housing look like in practice? From passive aggressive comments to discriminatory housing posts, three women share their stories about their challenges finding and maintaining safe and accessible housing in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
Dorrett White is a wife, mother, and working actor who has had roles on several shows, including The Boys, What We Do in the Shadows, and Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker.
White remembers first experiencing discrimination in housing when her and her now-husband were looking for a place to rent in the Beaches neighbourhood where they could grow into as a family. White is Black and her husband is Latino. Though they looked good on paper – her credit was great and his job paid more than minimum wage – they endured what seemed like endless rejection.
“Every landlord that we went to, they would tell us, ‘alright we’ll take your information and we will give you a call back’ and we never heard from any of them,” White said. “Even when we offered personal references, a number of employment letters, and people who could vouch for us, we would still never hear back. And we would always get told and reminded that ‘parties can’t happen here’ or not to invite too many people over. I’m not sure what that was about but that was a common thread in every single landlord we met on that journey.”
After a long search, White and her husband were accepted for a one-bedroom apartment, but they would soon find themselves on a difficult rental search again.
For Jasmine Jennings, a 24-year-old former youth in care and crown ward about to embark a Bachelor of Social Work, the challenge of finding suitable housing began when she turned 18.
“For a lot of youth in care, turning 18 is nothing to be excited about and the only gift you are guaranteed on this day is abandonment,” Jennings shared. “While other 17-year-olds around me were focused on finding the perfect prom dress or walking across the stage, I was thinking about homelessness.”
Jennings said that time spent in care often leads to a belief “that putting up with abuse, mistreatment, or just generally being uncomfortable is something that I have to do.” The belief that she did not deserve safe and stable housing was with her when she started to look for a place to rent after being released from foster care.
There were other challenges facing her, as well.
“I am disabled and Black, and I am a woman of low income, so it feels like all of the odds are stacked against me,” she said.
“Because I am disabled, my income is ODSP. And a lot of times, landlords do not want to accept someone who is disabled. In fact, in a lot of housing postings, you’ll see ‘job letter or recent paystubs required’ and this usually leaves me living in spaces that aren’t safe and don’t meet my accommodations,” Jennings shared. “I have had knives pulled on me, I have had inappropriate sexual advances. I’ve been locked out. I have been told that I have to be home at 10:00 p.m. I have paid money in cash then been told that I haven’t paid, so I had to pay double. So, being left to live in spaces that aren’t safe has been really challenging.
White also found herself renting an apartment that she did not feel comfortable with due to discrimination in her rental search.
After enjoying their apartment in the Beaches neighbourhood for a couple of years, White and her husband sought to find a bigger place after having a daughter. Realizing that the Beaches would be too expensive for their budget, they decided to try looking in Scarborough. While Scarborough had more apartments in their budget, it was still difficult for them to find a landlord willing to rent to them.
“We thought it would be easier to look for an apartment as a family, but funnily enough, it felt like it was much harder,” White said. Instead of being told, ‘Oh, we don’t know if you can afford this place,’ we would be told things like ‘Oh, this one-bedroom or this two-bedroom might not actually work for your family’ or ‘no children allowed here.’ ”
After “months and months” of searching, they eventually found someone that would rent to them. Though there were some red flags, such as the landlord only accepting cash as rent payment, they took the place.
“Out of desperation, we decided okay, this guy said we could come in, so let’s go. That ended up being one of the biggest mistakes we ever made,” White said.
Sheila Warner is Gitxsan, a member of the wolf clan, and her spirit name is May-may-zey May-ga-zay, Eagle from all Directions. She is a licensed paralegal with Aboriginal Legal Services, working primarily in eviction prevention.
One major housing issue that Warner sees with the community she serves – low-income Indigenous people in Toronto – is related to Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) and the idea of being incorrectly identified as overhoused.
“If a family has a two-bedroom apartment or a three-bedroom apartment and CAS [Children’s Aid Society] apprehends one or two children then that tenant is suddenly overhoused and they try and evict them for that,” Warner explained. “However, in order to get their child back, CAS requires that they have a bedroom for each child that are of the opposite sex or if it’s the same sex there is only so many years they can be apart to share a bedroom. So, then your housing is at risk, your children are gone, and now you have no way to get them back because they are not going to give them back unless you have that housing.”
While she advocates for her clients regularly, Warner said that she finds it challenging to advocate for herself as she also faces discrimination in her housing.
“I am experiencing it this week with my own landlord,” she said. “I have lived in this place for almost 10 years, so my rent is significantly lower than what market rent is right now. The upstairs tenants have just moved out, so he has in turn started harassing me and yelling at me. He doesn’t talk to me, he screams at me, and he seems to think that this is okay.”
Recently, while her landlord was yelling at her for letting a neighbour park in her parking space, Warner told him and his wife that instead of being concerned about a minor parking issue, they should look at the mould in her bathroom that she has been asking them to take care of for years. Warner says that the landlord’s wife turned to her and told her that if she had a problem with the mould, she could move out.
“I know my rights and I can professionally defend myself, but it is so stressful that I can’t,” Warner said. “I am dealing with other people’s housing stuff all day that when it comes to dealing with my own, I end up putting up with it. And also, it is cheap rent, so I let them push me around.”
White, the actor and mother, also reports being treated poorly by one landlord.
After leaving the apartment in Scarborough, her and her family ended up renting an apartment from White’s old college professor. They loved the apartment, but the landlord of the building made it difficult for them to enjoy their stay.
“He would make rude comments to us under his breath. He wouldn’t greet us like he would greet all the other tenants…And if he did talk to us, it was in a really stern, angry, aggressive voice,” White said.
While the three women felt frustrated and disappointed by their experiences trying to rent an apartment in the GTA, they expressed optimism that things can get better for racialized and low-income renters.
White hopes that discussions like the one at the workshop “can lead to changes and reforms and maybe a bit more ruling for private landlords in terms of how they choose who they are renting to.”
The Aboriginal Legal Services, where Warner works, has recently begun offering an Indigenous circle where people from all backgrounds can go to engage in alternative dispute resolution.
“I think when people sit down and they discuss with their landlord what is happening and they can tell their side of the story, the landlord is forced to see them as a person and not a name and number on a file in their office, and that is really beneficial,” Warner said.
For Jennings, as a former youth in care who is now immersed in social justice work, “it is important to me that a worker understands the systemic nature of homelessness and implements anti-oppression practices whenever possible. It is important that a supporter understands the child welfare system, the realities of youth from care.…And finally, it is important that a supporter is culturally competent and how my race impacts the likelihood of securing safe housing,” she said.
“I don’t think that stable housing is a want. I think it is a need and is a social determinant of health,” she added. “It is my hope that youth who age out of the system can experience safety and what it feels like to be home.”
These stories from Dorrett, Jasmine and Sheila were first shared during a workshop on systemic discrimination in housing that took place on July 6, 2021. The workshop was organized by CCHR and the Right to Housing Toronto as part of a virtual workshop series that addresses the critical challenges in advancing the right to housing.
The Government of Canada’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) commits to address the housing needs of the most vulnerable, promote community building and encourage partnerships to advance the right to housing. How will this be done?
This pamphlet examines the extent to which governmental budgeting and resource allocation is contributing to meeting the goals the federal government has set out in the NHS, as well as its commitments to implement the right to housing as outlined in the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA).
This pamphlet was produced by the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN).
Throughout 2021, CCHR and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN) held a series of regional workshops with local partners across Canada.
During these workshops, participants identified the systemic issues that prevent people from realizing their right to housing, including issues faced by: Indigenous people, women-led households, persons with disabilities, members of racialized groups, immigrants and refugees, members of LGBTQ2S+ communities and people with low incomes.
Participants have also proposed solutions for how this right can be claimed under the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA).
Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut
In partnership with:
British Columbia
In partnership with:
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba
In partnership with:
Quebec
This workshop was led by:
Note: this report is only available in French.
Ontario
In partnership with:
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador
In partnership with:
As an immigrant, a survivor of domestic abuse, and a formerly unhoused person, Dankwa’s journey has neither been easy nor linear. She wants to share her lived experience because “there are so many other people that nobody will ever know their story, but they are dying on the street. A lot of voices are not being heard and I’ve been through so much that keeping it to myself is not going to help.”
Dankwa came to Canada to escape an abusive relationship in New York where she felt her pleas for help were not being taken seriously enough.
“I felt like I wasn’t getting the support that I needed,” she says. “My children and I were not safe at all, so I did what I had to do to protect me and my children.”
After arriving in Ontario, Dankwa ended up at a shelter. She describes her time there as challenging, with a lack of trust between the women staying there and the shelter staff.
“The shelter is a good place in an emergency. It should be just emergency services,” she says. “I should be staying in that shelter not more than two to three weeks and then should be put in a house or apartment. We need homes. We don’t need to put so much money in the shelters. No abused women with children should stay in a shelter for more than a month because then it becomes another mental health issue to deal with in that place.”
At her shelter, Danka says she did not receive the appropriate transitional support and was instead kicked out for overstaying.
“A shelter is where you’re supposed to get the legal services, where you get all the support that you are supposed to get, but in my case, that was not there. In my case, I had to leave because I had overstayed and when I said no, I was literally kicked out and my stuff was thrown out in a plastic bag.”
After leaving the shelter, Dankwa bounced around different places.
“I was couch surfing. I will go to this person’s place for a week [then] that person’s place for a week and sleep on their couch. I’ll go take a shower here then I will go somewhere else the next day and stay there for a little bit until I get my work money then I can stay in a motel. When that money runs out, I go back on the street and try to figure out what friend will take me in for the night.”
After bouncing around for months, she finally found a one-bedroom basement apartment that she could afford.
However, her joy at finding housing for the first time since fleeing her abusive relationship was short-lived.
“What I didn’t know was that it was another nightmare that I was going to face,” she says.
Dankwa’s new landlord lived above her and had strict rules around what Dankwa could or could not do.
“She told me that when I go out, I have to come home at a certain time or I shouldn’t come in. I should stay outside,” Dankwa says. “So, when I go out and it’s past 10:00 o’clock, I have to sleep on somebody’s couch again.”
Dankwa was also not allowed to have friends over in her apartment. If someone wanted to visit her, they had to sit in her landlord’s living room while the landlord was there.
After a friend came over one day at a pre-planned time and the landlord asked her to reschedule because she wanted to go out, Dankwa had had enough.
“I didn’t know where I was gonna go, but I said to myself ‘If I have left that man in the United States and have come all the way and stayed in the shelter where I’ve been kicked out of, there is nothing else that I can’t deal with.”
And with that, Dankwa was homeless again.
“I remember Thanksgiving. It was the saddest Thanksgiving ever,” Dankwa recalls. “I was always the person cooking Thanksgiving, everybody coming to my home. I had a huge house, it was beautiful. I worked so hard for that place. And Thanksgiving came and I was homeless.”
After a couple of months, Dankwa found another basement apartment that she could afford in Peel Region; this one without a kitchen, fridge, or microwave.
The first night, she slept on the floor with no comforter. The second day, while a friend drove her to find some supplies, they were hit by another vehicle.
Being an immigrant with no permanent resident card at the time, Dankwa was too scared to go to the hospital.
“I started having anxiety attacks and depression,” she says. “When a woman is running from abuse, we should not look at the nationality or the country that they are coming from in order to provide them [with support], we should look at them as a human being. As a woman who needs help, that is it.”
Dankwa stayed in the basement apartment “hoping that the kitchen would be done,” she says. “That did not happen.”
Dankwa says she explored different avenues for help with finding suitable and stable housing, but was rebuffed at every turn, in part due to her immigration status.
“After a while, I started moving again,” Dankwa says.
“The road to finding a place has not been easy. Throughout, I encountered landlords that would like to take advantage of me in every way they can knowing my situation. But one thing that I said to myself after what I experienced with my ex-husband and what I experienced in the shelter, is that there’s things I won’t entertain anymore. I would rather be on the street and be happy than giving money to somebody to abuse me.”
While Dankwa has now found more stable housing, she still fears that it could all be taken away.
“When it comes to women’s homelessness, we need more special attention,” she says.
“I’m not saying other people don’t need special attention, but most of the time, it is women leaving abusers and a lot of them will take their children with them, so it is not as easy for women to stay in the shelter or on the streets,” she explains.
“We live in a world where we are always trying to help other people from different places, but we have women here going through abuse who don’t even have a home to stay. And sometimes people think that we have the systems in place…but the programs and the systems are not set up to actually provide adequate housing, and so the woman ends up back with the abuser or on the street.”
For Dankwa, a large part of the issue with women’s homelessness is that there is a lack of understanding by the vast majority of the population. “People get judgmental because they have not been in our shoes,” she says.
“If I can use that energy that I have, that anger, that strength, to let people know [what homeless people] are going through then somebody might listen. Somebody might read the story somewhere. Somebody might have the passion to even advocate. And this is the way that I can help somebody else.”
Renters who are facing eviction have several resources at their disposal to help them take the necessary steps to protect their right to housing. This pamphlet includes a list of resources for each province and territory in Canada to inform renters about the provincial and territorial laws that protect their tenancy, the bodies that make decisions about their tenancy, where they can receive legal help and all other protections available beyond provincial legislation.
This pamphlet was produced by the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) – formerly known as CERA – and the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN).
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
