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).
Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) is a planning tool used by municipal governments to encourage or mandate developers who intend to build new dwellings, to “set aside” a portion of these units for affordable use. Such units may be allocated for sale or lease at affordable rates. Developers may also have the option of building the affordable units in other locations within a city, or they may be able to pay cash in lieu of actually developing the units. Municipal governments may offer incentives such as further relaxations on building height or “density bonusing” to generate more investments from developers in affordable housing.
The rationale for adopting the policy partly stems from a general failure among many local governments to effectively leverage the dynamics of the market to create affordable housing options for low - and moderate-income people. For instance, in Toronto out of the 230,000 new housing units that were constructed or slated for development over the last five years, only 2% offered rents at or below market rates. Most of the new buildings are condominiums or detached homes. Housing options available for those living on fixed incomes like seniors or for people making a living off precarious employment like many young adults, are negligible.
Local planning and infrastructure investment decisions have created conditions to promote private development activity in major cities across Canada, but not enough affordable housing has emerged out of this process. Specifically, zoning amendments such as density relaxations and encouragement of mixed -use development signal greater economic activity, in turn promoting speculative behaviour in land markets. Prospective investors and developers make projections about potential development revenues generated based on the policy changes and related market and operational variables, in practice materializing into inflated investments in land. To maximize profit margins, new housing built on these lands are priced at rates that are targeted towards higher income earners.
The strategy is thus investor driven - one that endeavours to increase returns at exponential rates. The housing needs of households in the low- and moderate-income range are effectively overlooked, leading to a form of market failure that warrants some form of government intervention. Indeed, public policy appears to have created conditions for the development industry to reap windfall profits without many conditions in place to capture a meaningful portion of the proceeds for the greater needs of the public.
IZ closes part of this gap. By requiring or negotiating with developers to provide affordable housing options either directly or through cash in lieu, evidence from most jurisdictions that have experimented with the policy shows that affordable options can be created over time with varying levels of success. Plus, it is likely that the restrictive orientation of the IZ policy tool has a dampening effect on the skyrocketing prices of land in many cities.
Opponents of the policy tend to point to the policy’s cost prohibitive design. This, they suggest, leads to rising house prices, the burdens of which are carried by prospective homeowners, or supply could be constricted at a city-wide level. However, the theoretical basis and evidence to support such claims are fragile.
Firstly, property buyers tend to be sensitive to dramatic price shifts, so developers are left with little room to pass on high costs to these groups without risking losing market share. To the extent that there may be some increase in house prices in select cases, the role of IZ in this increase is minimal. In areas such as the Washington-Baltimore region, where the effects of the policy on supply have been studied, there appears to be no evidence of any negative effects after the introduction of the IZ policy.
While IZ clearly demonstrates potential, it can only work in cities with hot property markets, ones which are experiencing population and economic growth. If house prices are not escalating rapidly enough, then developers do not have the room to internalize the costs of the policy and generate sufficient returns. In fact, within cities, some neighbourhoods might be experiencing faster growth than others, implying the need for a differentiated approach to applying the policy.
Further, IZ primarily benefits moderate-income earners. A private developer can only do so much in creating affordable housing options. To sustain the arrangement, the prospective homeowner or renter must be earning a reasonable income generated from employment. This helps cover costs of rent or mortgage as well as maintenance and repairs over time. Its potential of helping meet the needs of this group is significant. Persistent shortfalls in affordable housing options can increase the risk of labour shortages on account of pricing out such households who then seek out cheaper options in other jurisdictions.
However, households in lower income categories such as newcomers and single-parent families have limited mobility options given that economic opportunities and social and physical infrastructure tend to be concentrated in larger cities. Neglecting such groups threatens the very economic dynamism and social fabric of large metropolises. A creative IZ policy that includes provisions for more stringent affordability requirements in some areas along with additional supports may hold some potential in covering a wider spectrum of income groups including households living in more precarious economic conditions.
Several European countries have experimented with various forms of IZ over the years. The United States, given its long history with implementing the policy, and comparable federal structure to Canada is noteworthy. IZ started emerging in the 1970s in American urban policy as federal housing programs started to wind down.
Today, there are over 500 IZ programs in about half of the country’s states, with jurisdictions ranging from large cities such as Chicago to smaller communities like Telluride, Colorado. The majority of initiatives is concentrated in California, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Key facts include:
The extent to which IZ can generate a significant number of affordable housing stock is contingent on the calibration of the policy, the permutations and combinations of which are determined by local context.
Montreal and Vancouver were the first Canadian cities to start experimenting with voluntary forms of inclusionary zoning. As provinces empower municipalities to adopt the policies, more are considering following suit. Notably, Toronto has proposed a mandatory program that will last for 99 years. Such actions point to an increasing recognition amongst municipal governments across Canada that value capture tools are a critical way to address the growing housing crisis in the country.
Janine Harvey lives in Ulukhaktok, a community of less than 450 people in the Beaufort Delta Region of the Northwest Territories.
At the time of this interview, her community has no internet service and so we speak over the phone instead of the now ubiquitous Zoom.
Harvey is a mother, wife, an advocate, and a supporter of Inuit culture. She describes Ulukhaktok as a “very cultural community; lots of hunting and fishing, craft making and artists.”
That culture is part of what led her back there after decades away.
“I wanted to be part of my culture again,” she says.
Harvey grew up in Ulukhaktok, but moved to Yellowknife when she was 19.
In Yellowknife, she began her career as a support worker with the YWCA, working at a women’s shelter called the Alison McAteer House.
“I worked there for five and a half years and during my time there, I would say maybe 90 percent of the women and children that were fleeing family violence were Indigenous or Inuit,” she says. “And I thought there was a need for more workers that are Indigenous because we have this connection. I thought I could bring a lot of different things to the table because I am helping my own people and they trust me.”
Harvey says she was drawn to the work at the shelter because of her own lived experience.
“I am a victim of sexual assault, and I am a victim of a kidnapping. With the trauma that I’ve endured myself, I decided I wanted to help other people,” she says. “I decided I wanted to make sure that women had a safe place to go…I wanted to be an advocate for a lot of women that were facing family violence or that didn’t have a home. Then it just became bigger.”
After the YWCA, Harvey started working at the Women’s Society in Yellowknife.
“With the help of the Women’s Society, me and my colleague Lauren started the Housing First program from the ground up,” she says. “That program opened my eyes to another area of vulnerable people: people who were homeless and had nowhere to go, who were sleeping outside in -30 weather.
“I thought ‘this is not right’ then ‘there’s more that I could do’, so I started working with the people that were experiencing homelessness. I started asking what they wanted to do and what they needed to do instead of me telling them.”
What she heard from a lot of people in the program, Harvey says, was that they simply needed non-judgmental support.
“There’s a lot of stigma towards homelessness. So, a lot of the people that I worked with asked ‘can you come with me to a meeting?’ or ‘can you come with me to Walmart because they’re not gonna let me in?’” Harvey says. “So, I found a lot of what we did was just to help empower the participants and to help reconnect them to society by going with them to meetings, to buy groceries, making sure they weren’t getting bad treatment from service workers or the public and just really helping them build their confidence.”
Harvey believes that “housing is a right and everyone deserves a home, no matter who you are, or where you are from” and says that the government is not doing enough to address the housing crisis and poverty in the North.
“I advocate because I see how my people are living in the poorest housing for the highest rent. They are living in these units, where some of them have no doors or there’s mould in the kitchen or their floors need to be replaced, and there’s no renovation because they don’t have the materials and there are not enough workers to do maintenance and repairs. A lot of people in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut live in really poor conditions for a really high cost of living.”
To push for change, Harvey sits on her local council, the Pan-Canadian Voice for Women’s Housing and the Steering Committee of the National Right to Housing Network.
“The government hasn’t taken action on ending poverty as much as I would like to see, and they haven’t moved forward on housing for years and years,” she says.
Because her community is under-resourced, Harvey’s work is currently unpaid.
“Everything I am doing now is as a volunteer,” she says. “My drive comes from hearing the really horrible stories that people have had to go through. The money doesn’t even matter, I am just going to keep fighting for you because what is happening is not right.”
Harvey’s return to Ulukhaktok has also been about healing.
“I went to Yellowknife for school, but I left my community due to family violence. I didn’t want to go back home because I felt judged and labelled and that I did wrong,” she explains. “The guy who had assaulted me when I was a teenager, I was one of the first people in my community to charge them for sexual assault. And the guy that kidnapped me got five years in jail, but it was really hard for me to move past all that.
“After some time in Yellowknife, after my kidnapping, I was an alcoholic. For a couple years. I drank my pain away. And everybody would say that I should go to a treatment centre, but I knew in my heart and in my head that I didn’t want to go to treatment because I couldn’t face being locked up, which a lot of people face up here. I now advocate for culturally appropriate treatment for our people, and for me, I knew I wanted to do my healing on the land in my own cultural ways.”
In Ulukhaktok, Harvey says she has gotten to “learn my Inuit way and reconnect with the land, my ancestors, and God, and have found forgiveness.”
She says she is hopeful that things will change and get better for her community.
“I believe that if I keep doing the work that I am doing, somebody might listen. Somebody in government might take action and give us more money for housing, for free lunches for children,” she says.
“I try and speak up and if someone hears me and has the passion that I have, they, too, can help end homelessness.”
Janine Harvey was one of the panelists at CCHR and the National Right to Housing’s workshop, “Claiming the Right to Housing in the North through the National Housing Strategy Act”, held in September 2021. The workshop is part of an ongoing series of regional workshops with local partners across Canada.
The right to adequate housing is derived from international human rights law. In international law, housing is seen as more than four walls and a roof. For housing to be considered adequate, it should meet a number of minimum conditions. One of these conditions is habitability, which means that adequate housing should guarantee its residents a place that is physically safe to live, provides adequate space where residents aren’t living in overcrowded conditions, and protects its residents against weather conditions like the cold, as well as other health or structural hazards.
Another minimum condition for a home to be considered adequate is the availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure. This means that its residents can access safe drinking water, have proper sanitation and disposal facilities, and can heat their home to just name a few examples. These minimum conditions ensure that a home is a safe and adequate place for its residents. When the right to housing and the conditions mentioned above are translated on the ground, it means that people can live in well maintained homes that are in a good state of repair. For Ontario renters, it is the responsibility of landlords to carry out maintenance and repairs, with regulations in place to hold them accountable.
The Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) is the Law that regulates the relationship between landlords and renters. The RTA applies to most rental housing in Ontario, such as rooms, apartments, houses, mobile home parks, and retirement homes. The RTA says that landlords are responsible for the maintenance and repair of everything that comes with renters’ homes, including appliances in the home and the common areas, such as hallways, parking garages and elevators. The RTA also says that landlords are responsible for taking steps to get rid of any pests and vermin, provide heat in cold weather, and are not allowed to cut off or interfere with any vital services such as the supply of water, electricity, or heat.
If a renter has a problem in their home, the first step is to inform their landlord about it and ask them to fix it. It is best to do this in writing, such as sending it in an email. If the landlord does not fix the problem, the next thing the renter can do is to call 311. This move will connect the renter to the City’s services department, such as those enforcing Property Standards, who can send an inspector to investigate the problem and order the landlord to fix it.
At the City of Toronto, another resource for tenants dealing with repair and maintenance issues is RentSafeTO, which can also be reached by calling 311. RentSafeTO is a bylaw enforcement program that launched in 2017 to ensure that owners of multi-unit housing structures (with three or more storeys and 10 or more units), such as apartment building owners, adhere to the building maintenance standards in the city. One of the goals of the program is to ensure that tenants are living in safe and adequate conditions, and to hold landlords accountable to keeping their buildings in a good state of repair. Owners of these apartment buildings are required to register with RentSafeTO and are responsible for complying with the rules of the program. If a landlord is not complying with the maintenance standards, the RentSafeTO team can issue orders and charge landlords.
The RentSafeTO program can be a critical component of ensuring that rental homes are safe and adequate places for their residents. Since its launch, the RentSafeTO program has audited most apartment buildings across the city. However, the program has also been criticized for failing to effectively carry out its mandate. Some have pointed out that not all buildings registered with the program have been audited. Others have pointed to the lack of standard operating procedures, which has left tenants waiting to know when their maintenance and repair problem will be resolved. Housing advocates have also raised issues with the lack of knowledge about the program across various communities.
If a renter continues to face maintenance and repair issues that their landlord is not responding to, and there is no resolution at the municipal level, they can then apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) – the body that resolves disputes between tenants and landlords. Renters can make an application based on maintenance and repair issues and ask the LTB for remedies like ordering the landlord to fix the problem or for a reduction in rent for the months during which the problem persisted. After renters make an application, a hearing is scheduled at the LTB where they can present their case, and show evidence to support it.
While it is crucial to have the LTB process in place, there are a number of challenges that renters face. Many renters often have to navigate the process by themselves without legal representation. They have to prepare for hearings on their own and gather the evidence they need to support their case. This requires legal know how. Additionally, sometimes hearings may take several months to be scheduled, which means that the problems in their rental home may not be fixed for a long period of time. Depending on the issue at hand, waiting for the hearing can mean living in unhealthy and hazardous situations. Meanwhile, if renters are successful at their LTB hearing, the financial remedies awarded, such as rent reductions, are not typically very high. In some cases, if the LTB orders a landlord to fix a problem, landlords may not follow the order and it can be challenging for tenants to get their landlord to do so.
The gaps in protections for renters, coupled with an affordable housing crisis, means that many individuals living on lower incomes are forced to stay in homes that are in a state of disrepair as there are limited alternatives they can afford. This has become a widespread phenomenon that can be identified as a systemic housing issue.
In order to respond to systemic housing issues plaguing the living conditions of many renters living in Canada, it is important that the voices of those most impacted are heard by decision-makers. One of the main ways that people living in Canada can bring forward these systemic housing issues is through the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA), which recognizes the right to housing domestically. The NHSA requires the government to create mechanisms to monitor the implementation of the right to housing and address systemic housing issues. One of these mechanisms is the Federal Housing Advocate, who is an independent human rights expert located within the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The role of the Housing Advocate is to investigate systemic housing issues and to hold our government accountable to meet its own policy to progressively realize the right to housing over time.
Once the Housing Advocate is appointed, submissions can be made by impacted communities on systemic housing issues. It is the hope that as renters learn more about these mechanisms, they can use them to push our governments to address systemic housing issues, such as those related to maintenance and repair.
Being evicted from one’s home can irrevocably change their life. It can mean not just losing housing, but losing stability, losing community, and in some cases, losing one’s sense of self-worth.
CCHR and Right to Housing Toronto (R2HTO) recently held a workshop to discuss evictions and the right to housing. To understand the impact of evictions during the pandemic from the ground up, we spoke with three lawyers who assist tenants facing evictions about the cases they see most often, the pandemic’s effect on tenants, and some of the client stories that have stayed with them.
Melissa Bramson and Ryan Hardy are both with the Tenant Duty Counsel Program (TDCP), a program of the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario funded by Legal Aid Ontario. TDCP are a group of lawyers and community legal workers who help tenants facing a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) by providing basic legal advice, helping to work out settlements with landlords, and reviewing and helping fill out some forms and documents, especially those related to eviction.
Bramson is the full-time tenant duty counsel in Ottawa based out of Community Legal Services of Ottawa, and Hardy is the supervisor for the Tenant Duty Counsel in Toronto and the Peel region. Both Bramson and Hardy say that most of the requests they get for help from tenants facing eviction are related to rent arrears, where the tenant was unable to pay their rent in full.
“I think a lot of my team would tell you it feels like we’re getting a narrower range of issues that we talk to people about,” Hardy says. “People in the pre-pandemic era would come in with all kinds of situations, just a wider range of things and problems that they were dealing with. It definitely feels like it’s narrowed a bit, and so arrears are first and foremost and it really kind of dominates.”
While rent arrears have always made up a large percentage of reasons that landlords file for eviction, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many people losing their income and therefore unable to pay all their rent.
“Recently, a large majority of people who are in arrears are people who lost their job because of COVID. You know CERB came through for a little bit, but maybe didn’t cover the same amount that they were used to. So, there’s a whole new group of people that are now in arrears,” Bramson says. This situation is especially true for those living in some of Canada’s most unaffordable cities to live as a renter, such as Toronto or Ottawa.
Yodit Edemariam is the director of legal services at Rexdale Community Legal Clinic, a non-profit legal clinic that serves people who are living on low incomes in the northwest of Toronto.
Edemariam says she has also seen the pandemic’s impact on people’s ability to pay their rent.
“People have had to make impossible choices about going to unsafe work versus trying to keep up with their rent and we have seen arrears across the province at levels that I have never seen in my career.”
The large number of arrears cases currently at the LTB may not just be due to people’s inability to pay their rent in full, but also due to the kinds of applications that the LTB seem to be prioritizing.
“There’s a huge volume of non-payment of rent cases that are being heard at the Board. I can see that based on the file numbers,” says Bramson. “For example, you have a number like EAL-12345-21, meaning that the landlord filed that application in 2021. So, I can see that all of the L1 non-payment of rent cases are from 2021, and I would say in comparison, the tenant applications for things like maintenance and repair, the majority of those that are on our docket are from 2019 and 2020, so it’s very clear what the LTB‘s priority is.”
Hardy says he has seen a similar trend.
“The tenant applications are a small fraction of what the Board is doing,” he says. “It’s a lot more work for most tenants to do their applications successfully, so it’s always been skewed, but it feels more dramatic now, and some of that is the Board scheduling.”
Tenant applications at the LTB can be related to a landlord who is neglecting the rental unit and not doing repairs, it can be related to a major appliance that is not working like a fridge, or harassment issues that tenants are facing by their landlord or representatives, just to name a few.
“I spoke to a gentleman just last week who had filed a pair of tenant applications in November. He was still waiting for his hearing, but his landlord’s hearing for eviction for arrears had been scheduled just in a couple of months,” Hardy says. “So, even though he had filed first, he was waiting much longer to get heard.”
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and public health guidelines, the LTB moved hearings online in March 2020. This has created challenges for some tenants, such as those who do not have access to a computer or reliable connection, those who are not comfortable with technology or those with language barriers.
“I have to do a lot of explaining to people on how to sign in [to the hearing]. People saying ‘I got this link but what does it mean?’” Bramson says. “Over the weekend, I got an email from a tenant who I had sent a PDF document to fill in and she said she didn’t know how to fill it in. This is something that we wouldn’t have dealt with before because we would tell her to go get a physical copy at the counter, but the counters are closed. “
Hardy says having hearings online also makes it challenging to provide the best advice to tenants.
“We provide legal advice and the advice will focus on different ways of trying to defend against the arrears application,” Hardy says. “If there’s technical defects in the landlord’s application, we’re going to try to talk about that. That’s something that’s a lot harder to do these days than it was because before usually people would be sitting there with their documents that you could look over. It’s much more difficult to do that now.”
With the online hearings “tenants and tenant duty counsel are at a huge disadvantage by not having that paperwork,” Bramson says. “And then the landlord’s the person who filed it, so they would have that paperwork and already have the products that they need, which makes it an unfair disadvantage right at the beginning.”
The cases that go in front of the LTB all have a letter and a number attached to them; Bramson referred to a hypothetical EAL-12345-21, which could be an application to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent and to collect rent that the tenant owes. Behind these application numbers lie real individuals with their own stories and journeys.
Hardy, who came back to working at the Tenant Duty Counsel in November 2020 after some time off, says the scale of arrears that people were dealing with made an impact on him.
“Seeing what people were up against was really shocking. There were so many people who had fallen victim to the pandemic/lockdown in different ways. People whose entire industries had ceased to function,” he says. “I spoke to a guy who was a tattoo artist, working independently, making good money and getting to do something creative, and then it was just done.”
Bramson thinks of tenants who are disadvantaged by eviction hearings moving online.
“I had a tenant who didn’t know how to submit her evidence in one email. I tried to talk her through it with my tech hat on and I said instead of sending one document at a time, you can attach six attachments to one email, but she didn’t know how to do it,” Bramson recalls.
“At the hearing, [the tenant] apologized to the [LTB] member, and for one reason or another, the matter was adjourned, and the member said to her, ‘at the next hearing, organize yourself because if I get multiple emails like this again, we might be talking about costs.’ So, costs are not to be confused with an administrative fine, but it’s something where if someone’s conduct was unreasonable, then the Board can award costs as a penalty. [The member] was saying it was unreasonable that the tenant didn’t know how to attach documents which is something that stuck out to me because she just didn’t understand the process.”
Edemariam, with the Rexdale Community Legal Clinic, says she thinks a lot about poverty and choice when it comes to her clients.
“I think from the Landlord and Tenant Board or the powers that be that there is a real misunderstanding of how people are living. I’ve seen clients’ bank statements, and that’s been one of the most profound experiences I’ve had in my career,” she says. “I think a lot about what poverty does in terms of where people live. I think sometimes people might ask our clients, ‘so why do you stay if there’s like a horrible mouse infestation and the landlord isn’t doing anything.’ And then they’re like ‘where am I gonna go? Where am I going to find a three-bedroom for this amount? So, the things people tolerate because of a lack of choice really sticks with me.”
Edemariam says she also thinks about the pride that her clients have about their communities and the importance of maintaining that community.
“I think there’s a lot of discourse here in social housing like ‘we’ve given you this extraordinary thing for cheap so you just basically take whatever it’s given’, but we see people building their own communities even when they’re told so many distressing narratives about the communities in which they live.”
The importance of community and helping people stay in their homes is also something that Bramson thinks about.
“No one is ever evicted into a more beneficial situation than they were in,” she says.
For Edemariam, something that her colleague once said has stuck with her.
“My colleague said that everything she’s been able to do in her life is because she had a safe place to live. And I think that’s a common theme throughout our work: how does anyone deal with anything in their lives unless there is an affordable and safe place to do so?”
Discrimination is the differential and unjust treatment of people based on personal characteristics. It often occurs when people judge others based on stereotypes, prejudice, and biases. In the context of renting a home, renters can experience discrimination by their landlords. This can occur at many stages of the housing process including when a renter is searching for housing, when they apply for housing, or while the renter is living in their rental home.
Black people, Indigenous peoples, newcomers, those living on lower incomes, single mothers, members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, young people, seniors, and families with children generally face higher levels of discrimination in housing. Many people can face multiple forms of discrimination based on their intersecting identities. For example, an Indigenous woman does not experience the world as an Indigenous person and as a woman separately. Instead, these identities intersect and she may experience multiple forms of oppression and discrimination at once as an Indigenous woman.
Discrimination can sometimes be overt. For example, a landlord who tells a single mother with two children that a two-bedroom unit is best suited for a couple without children is discriminating against her in an overt way based on family composition and marital status. However, discrimination can often be very subtle and difficult to identify. For example, a landlord requiring co-signors or guarantors for a newcomer renter is making renting difficult because most newcomers will not have a community or family to support them on that front. This form of discrimination is more indirect. It is referred to as constructive discrimination, where a policy or rule indirectly creates barriers for particular groups of people.
Other examples of discrimination may include:
The lack of available rental property in both Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has forced many renters to put up with discrimination as they fear not finding another place to call home. While the vacancy rate in Toronto increased in 2020 to 3.4%, the vacancy rate for affordable rental units remained low. The vacancy rate for purpose-built rentals with rents ranging from $750 – $999 was 1.4%. This means that for every 1,000 affordable rental units in the city there were only 14 units available for rent. The low vacancy rate of affordable rental housing means that a landlord has access to a larger pool of renters to choose from and may base their choice on discriminatory grounds. Additionally, when rental housing is scarce, renters are more willing to stay in housing situations where they are being discriminated against by their landlord.
How does the Ontario Human Rights Code protect against discrimination?
The Ontario Human Rights Code seeks to ensure that all people are treated equally and that their rights are protected. The Ontario Human Rights Code (“the Code”) prohibits discrimination in housing based on the following protected grounds:
In addition to the Code, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects peoples’ rights to be treated equally under the law. Canada also has obligations under international law, in particular, under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter, to ensure that all people are treated with dignity and that their human rights are respected. Canada has also signed several international treaties which commit the government to protect people from discrimination.
If a renter believes they have been discriminated against, they can file a claim to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (the “Tribunal”). This claim must be made based on a protected ground under the Code and filed within one year of the event. Once the claim is filed, the application will be sent to their landlord who may then respond to the claim. The renter is then given the option of mediation before a hearing takes place. In mediation, the Tribunal will hear both sides of the dispute and try to find a resolution that satisfies both parties – the renter and the landlord. If a settlement is not reached or the renter chooses not to pursue mediation, their claim will go to a hearing. During the hearing, the parties will each present evidence to support their position to the adjudicator who will consider both sides and make a final decision. This process can be quite lengthy and onerous on renters. The Tribunal aims to hold a hearing within a year of an application being filed but this may take longer depending on the circumstances. Additionally, final decisions are usually given to the parties three to six months following the hearing.
What makes discrimination a systemic issue is when it is caused by patterns of behavior, policies or practices that are a part of the structures of our society, organizations and institutions which put certain groups at a disadvantage. We can determine whether systemic discrimination is occurring in different ways. We can look at data to see how many marginalized people are represented in an organization and how they are treated. We can look at the policies and decision-making of institutions to see if they exclude certain groups. This is because although policies may seem neutral on the surface, they do not affect everyone equally. We can also look at the culture of organizations to see if that leads to certain groups being marginalized or excluded.
Examples of systemic discrimination in housing may include:
In 2019, the federal government passed the National Housing Strategy Act (NSHA), Canada’s first piece of legislation to identify housing as a fundamental human right. Under the NHSA, the federal government is required to ensure that vulnerable groups can participate in developing housing policy. To encourage participation, the NHSA establishes several mechanisms allowing for systemic issues, including those related to discrimination, to come to the attention of policy makers.
Three mechanisms created under the NHSA are meant to hold the federal government accountable to implement the right to housing:
The National Housing Council has been established, while the Federal Housing Advocate is yet to be named. The Federal Housing Advocate role in particular, creates an opportunity for people and communities to bring systemic issues to its attention by allowing them to make a submission. The Federal Housing Advocate can then investigate these issues and make recommendations to the federal Minister responsible to find policy solutions.
Claims to the Federal Housing Advocate are different from claims at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in the following ways:
In addition to the federal mechanisms in place, the City of Toronto has also made a commitment to a rights-based approach to housing policy through its 10-year housing plan, the HousingTO 2020-2030 Action Plan.
The plan includes the establishment of the Housing Commissioner’s Office that will hold the City accountable for the right to housing and to its promise of addressing systemic housing barriers. The Commissioner will help the City create policies that are consistent with the right to housing and will monitor its progress in reaching its goals. Additionally, the Commissioner will ensure that vulnerable groups are consulted about housing policy and that the systemic issues they face will be brought to the attention of City Council. Similar to the Federal Housing Advocate role, the creation of the Housing Commissioner will provide an opportunity for groups to bring forward their experiences of systemic discrimination in housing. The City of Toronto’s Housing Commissioner has yet to be established.
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.
Throughout the spring, summer and fall of 2021, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA) and the Right to Housing Toronto (R2HTO) ran a 5-part virtual workshop series across Toronto and the GTA to address critical challenges in advancing the right to housing, and to build awareness of how to claim the right to housing under the National Housing Strategy Act and HousingTO 2020-2030 Action Plan.
#1: Using the National Housing Strategy Act and HousingTO Plan
Participants at this workshop had a rich conversation about systemic housing issues and how people can claim their right to housing under the National Housing Strategy Act and the HousingTO 2020-2030 Action Plan.
#2: Addressing Systemic Discrimination in Housing
Participants heard from people who have experienced discrimination in their housing and learned about the frameworks that protect communities from these issues. They also joined small groups to propose solutions to address these issues.
#3: Evictions and the Right to Housing
This workshop provided an overview of the international frameworks and provincial laws that protect renters from eviction and focused on trends in evictions during the pandemic. Participants learned about the National Housing Strategy Act and eviction prevention policies, and discussed how the right to housing can be realized over time.
#4: Addressing Maintenance & Repairs
This workshop provided an overview of the legal frameworks that protect renters’ right to adequate housing by ensuring that housing is habitable and in a good state of repair. Participants learned how maintenance and repairs in rental homes can be a systemic housing issue and discussed how communities can address these issues and claim their right to housing.
#5: Ways Forward in Claiming the Right to Housing in the GTA
The final workshop in our series provided an overview of the key issues we learned from our four previous workshops on the National Housing Strategy Act, discrimination in housing, evictions, and maintenance and repairs. A panel of advocates discussed solutions proposed in previous workshops and how to take collective action to claim the right to housing in the GTA.
The National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) is Canada’s first piece of legislation that identifies housing as a fundamental human right as recognized under international law.
It recognizes that all people have the “right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity” and provides the federal government with a mandate to develop and support rights-based housing policies to advance its commitment to progressively realize the right to housing over time.
The NHSA recognizes that housing is important for the inherent dignity of a person and that it helps to build communities that are inclusive.
Under the NHSA, the federal government is required to:
The NHSA does not require:
Although the NHSA does not provide an avenue for individuals to pursue a complaint related to a violation of their individual right to housing, if many people are facing a similar kind of issue which hinders the realization of their right to housing, this may be identified as a systemic issue.
Examples of systemic issues:
People who are affected by these and other types of issues related to the right to housing may make a submission to the Federal Housing Advocate to investigate and make recommendations to the responsible Minister to take action. In some cases, the Federal Housing Advocate may also refer the issues raised in a submission to a Review Panel for public hearings.
Three key mechanisms have been created under the NHSA to hold the federal government accountable to implement the right to housing:
Each of these mechanisms has a distinct role and set of responsibilities, and all three interact with one another. Together they provide an innovative and participatory model through which systemic housing issues and human rights claims can be presented by affected groups and reviewed outside of the judicial system.
Let’s take a closer look at their roles and responsibilities.
The Office of the Federal Housing Advocate is located within the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Its role is to promote and ensure compliance with the federal government’s policy to progressively realize the right to housing over time through various mechanisms and processes.
The Advocate is responsible to:
The National Housing Council is a body created to further the progressive realization of the right to housing and oversee the National Housing Strategy. The Council advises the Minister responsible for housing issues in Canada about the effectiveness of the National Housing Strategy, and promotes participation and inclusion in housing policy development.
The NHSA requires that the Council is made up of individuals as well as government representatives, and includes representation from vulnerable groups, people with lived experience of homelessness and inadequate housing, people reflecting the diversity of Canadian society, and people with human rights expertise. Through the make-up of this Council, people who are directly impacted by housing challenges across the country will be involved in vital decisions to assess and ensure the government’s compliance with the right to housing.
The Council is responsible to:
The role of the Review Panel is to hear selective cases of systemic issues that are identified by the Federal Housing Advocate. When the Federal Housing Advocate receives one or more submissions on a systemic issue, the Advocate may request the National Housing Council to form from its members a three-person Review Panel to hear such issues. The Review Panel will be selected to ensure representation from vulnerable groups, people with lived experiences, and human rights expertise.
The Review Panel is responsible to:
Making submissions to the Federal Housing Advocate on systemic issues that deny affected groups their right to housing is a critical new tool for claiming the right to housing. The Federal Housing Advocate will engage with affected groups and conduct a thorough investigation into the issue. The Advocate’s findings and recommendations will be based on what is required under international human rights law to ensure the right to housing, and they cannot be ignored by the government. If the Advocate refers the issue to a review panel, this will provide an additional opportunity for affected individuals and groups to be heard and to bring forth their claim to the right to housing.
These mechanisms ensure that affected groups can participate and contribute to the realization of their right to housing, which is a core component of a rights-based approach. The meaningful engagement of rights holders that is outlined in the NHSA can be an effective way to claim the right to housing as established under the tenets of international law.
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