November 22, 2025, marks the 25th anniversary of National Housing Day. Just as Labour Day is an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the labour movement and continue fighting for workers’ rights, National Housing Day is a day to recognize housing as a fundamental human right and take action to ensure everyone has a safe, secure, and affordable place to call home.
Over the past year, we have seen some important progress on the right to housing across the country, alongside some deeply concerning backsliding. Below, we highlight key right to housing wins, misses, and opportunities ahead. You can also find information about National Housing Day events in your region to join the movement to continue pushing for concrete action to end housing need and homelessness.
Across the country, a few provincial and territorial governments took some promising steps to expand rent regulation, while ongoing opportunities remain to close loopholes and ensure renters have secure, affordable homes for the long term:
In other jurisdictions, opposition parties are planning or introduced private members’ bills calling for stronger rent regulation, where rent regulation is weak and/or contains loopholes – for example, in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec – or where rent regulation does not exist at all – for example, in Saskatchewan. See CCHR’s commentary on the importance of strong rent regulation to protect renters in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and across the country.
In addition to launching its new homelessness strategy, Manitoba also took important steps to protect some of its community housing stock and require landlords to cover costs for renters forced to leave their homes due to health or safety issues. See CCHR’s deputation to the Manitoba Standing Committee on Legislative Affairs on the importance of ensuring landlords fulfill their obligations to provide safe and habitable homes for renters.
Across the country, some jurisdictions either reduced or failed to ensure equitable access to community housing for those in greatest need:
Following a year of both progress and backsliding on the right to housing across the country, we look forward to upcoming opportunities to centre housing as a human right in the national discourse and in law and policy at all levels of government, through ongoing research, policy advocacy, law reform, and community engagement and mobilization.
Later this year, Neha, the National Housing Council review panel on the right to housing for women, Two Spirit, Trans, and gender-diverse people, will release recommendations for the federal government to uphold this right, following engagement with people with lived experience, housing rights organizations, and experts on human rights, housing, and social inequality. See CCHR’s recommendations, where we outline the impact of intersectional factors on housing security, gendered experiences of homelessness, Canada’s duty and failure to uphold the right to housing for women and gender-diverse people, and key principles and actions to realize this right.
On June 12, 2025, the Federal Housing Advocate called for the National Housing Council to launch its next review panel to examine the lack of accessible housing across Canada, in light of the disproportionate rates of housing need and homelessness among people with disabilities. CCHR looks forward to engaging in this review panel and helping advance the right to housing for people with disabilities, drawing on our ongoing policy and research work in this area.
As we highlight in our analysis of the 2025 federal budget, attaching conditions for provinces and territories to access federal funding is critical to ensure an effective, coordinated approach to ending homelessness and housing need. The federal government exercised this power by using the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund as an incentive for provinces and territories to adopt elements of the Renters’ Bill of Rights. It also introduced a new Build Communities Strong Fund that has the potential to take a similar approach.
Building on our advocacy to date, we continue to call for the federal government to strengthen the Renters’ Bill of Rights and ensure that provinces and territories commit to implementing strong renter protections in order to access federal funding, including long-term affordability, security, and other critical protections for renters. At the same time, we look forward to ongoing work with provinces and territories to strengthen renter protections across the country – both in policy and in practice.
As noted above, CCHR was proud to join coalitions of advocates, researchers, and lived experts across various sectors – including housing, homelessness, health care, drug policy, disability justice, human rights, settlement, migrant justice, public transit, and more – to push back against harmful laws in Ontario. We are also active members of Right to Housing Toronto, Right to Housing Manitoba, National Right to Housing Network, and other community, legal, and research networks, where we work with partners across the country to advance the right to housing.
Looking ahead to 2026, we will continue building and engaging with coalitions to drive collective advocacy and action to end homelessness and housing need.
On November 4, 2025, the federal government tabled Budget 2025: Canada Strong, the first budget under Prime Minister Mark Carney. The budget comes at a time of rising housing insecurity and homelessness, widening income inequality, and job and income loss across the country. At the centre of these intersecting crises are renters and people experiencing homelessness.
While Budget 2025 includes some important, previously announced commitments toward affordable housing development, significant gaps remain that must be filled to meet the current moment. Of critical concern, the budget does not include:
The budget also reinforces damaging stereotypes about immigration as a driver of the housing crisis, while failing to recognize the key role that the financialization of housing has played in driving up prices, increasing housing insecurity and homelessness, and further marginalizing equity-deserving communities.
Below, we outline what’s missing from Budget 2025 and opportunities for the federal government to make meaningful progress on ending homelessness and housing need, reflecting our pre-budget recommendations.
Previously announced in September 2025, Build Canada Homes is the cornerstone housing commitment in the budget and commits $13 billion over five years to primarily support the development of non-market housing. While these are important commitments, the budget does not allocate any new funding for Build Canada Homes or any other affordable or supportive housing initiatives that would help address the housing and homelessness crisis. Moreover, the budget does not include targets, timelines, or requirements for Build Canada Homes related to affordability, renter protections, and the needs of equity-deserving communities. As such, it fails to demonstrate how Build Canada Homes will achieve its goals of restoring affordability and reducing homelessness. Instead, it continues the pattern of previous budgets in failing to prioritize and maximize investments in the deeply affordable housing needed to address the current crisis.
A recent report from the Federal Housing Advocate shows the need to build or acquire a minimum of 200,000 non-market homes per year over the next 30 years to address housing need and homelessness. Recent research from Maytree shows this could be achieved through a $40 billion annual federal investment. This contrasts dramatically with the $13 billion investment and less than 5,000 homes announced to date through Build Canada Homes (only some of which are targeted for those in greatest need).
Following a recent CMHC report, the budget defines housing affordability based on 2019 levels, when households spent roughly 40-45 per cent of their income on housing. This is much higher than the widely accepted 30 per cent affordability standard. To meet this threshold, the budget commits to double homebuilding over the next decade, but it does not set any targets for affordability, housing types or renter protections.
This logic relies on the assumption that new housing supply alone will increase affordability, yet the evidence shows this is not the case. For example, despite a historic increase in rental housing development last year, a recent CMHC report found that new units were too expensive for low- and moderate-income renters, and the increase in supply did little to improve affordability.
To meaningfully address the housing and homelessness crisis, new housing supply must be targeted to those in greatest need. According to data from the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART), nearly 20 per cent of households in Canada earn 50 per cent or less of the median household income in their area and can afford to spend a maximum of $1,050 on housing costs each month. It is thus critical for new housing supply to have clear and long-term affordability requirements and be paired with provisions for strong renter protections to meet the needs of those most impacted by the crisis. At the same time, existing affordable housing – and the people who live there – must be protected against excessive rent increases, demolitions, and conversions through robust acquisition programs (including deeper investments in the Canada Rental Protection Fund) and strong renter protections.
The budget commits $51 billion over 10 years in new and existing funding to launch a Build Communities Strong Fund, which includes funding for provinces and territories to build the infrastructure needed for housing such as roads, water, and wastewater systems. To access this new funding, provinces and territories must cost-match federal funding, reduce development charges, and refrain from introducing new taxes related to housing development. However, the budget does not indicate any requirements for this new funding related to building affordable housing, protecting renters, or meeting the needs of equity-deserving communities.
Attaching conditions for provinces and territories to access federal funding is a key lever at the federal government’s disposal to help align housing policies and programs across levels of government and ensure a coordinated approach to ending homelessness and housing need. The federal government previously exercised this power by using the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund as an incentive for provinces and territories to adopt elements of the Renters’ Bill of Rights.
While most Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund agreements have now been signed, we have yet to see commitments from the provinces and territories related to renter protections outlined in the Renters’ Bill of Rights. Moreover, despite including important measures that aim to improve renter protections, the Renters’ Bill of Rights also omits some key provisions, including clear guidelines around rent regulation and eviction prevention.
The Build Communities Strong Fund includes funding previously committed through the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund. As such, strong renter protections, clear and long-term affordability requirements, and commitments to meet the housing needs of equity-deserving communities must be central conditions of funding agreements between the federal government and the provinces and territories.
The budget commits some dedicated funding for communities disproportionately impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis, including:
While these are important commitments that could help address the housing needs of Indigenous people, women, and gender diverse people, the budget still falls short of providing enough funding or setting clear targets for housing projects that meet the needs of these and other equity-deserving communities who face disproportionate rates of housing need and homelessness, including people with disabilities, Black and other racialized people, seniors, youth, immigrants, refugees, people living in rural and remote communities, and people experiencing homelessness. For example, Indigenous housing leaders have called for investments to quadruple the supply of Indigenous-led community housing, with estimates ranging from $4.3 billion to $5.6 billion per year over 10 years to meet needs of urban, rural, and northern Indigenous communities.
Moreover, the budget fails to provide opportunities for engagement with people with lived experience of housing precarity and homelessness to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of the government’s housing policies and programs – a key element of a human rights-based approach.
Budget 2025 also commits to increasing the Canada Mortgage Bond annual issuance limit from $60 billion to $80 billion for multi-unit housing development. This commitment aligns with other government policies that continue to fuel the financialization of housing by treating housing as a commodity rather than a human right. This includes tax loopholes, low interest borrowing, and inadequate regulation that incentivize financial actors to purchase rental housing for the sole purpose of maximizing profits for investors, rather than providing safe, secure, and affordable homes for renters. This leads to excessive rent increases, displacement, and evictions, with disproportionate impacts on equity-deserving communities.
At the same time, governments at all levels continue to rely heavily on the private sector to build new housing, which has failed to produce housing that is affordable to lower income households. While there is some promise in Build Canada Homes’ focus on growing the community housing sector, the budget continues the government’s misguided approach of centralizing the private sector in its housing plans and policies.
With few new investments, meagre mention of renters, and no targets to end housing need and homelessness, Budget 2025 fails to meet the current moment. Alongside our sector partners, we continue to urge the federal government to adopt evidence- and rights-based solutions to the housing and homelessness crisis. As we outlined in our pre-budget submission, this includes:
On September 14, 2025, the federal government launched Build Canada Homes, a new agency responsible for affordable housing development across the country. Build Canada Homes aims to work with all levels of government, Indigenous, private, and non-profit partners to scale up the supply of affordable housing. It aims to coordinate federal leadership, provide financing and support construction innovation. The agency intends to primarily focus on supporting the growth of the non-market, community housing sector, including Indigenous, non-profit, co-operative, and public housing, with the goal of doubling housing construction, restoring affordability, and reducing homelessness.
To begin, Build Canada Homes is investing $13 billion alongside access to federal lands, with four initial priority projects:
Below, we outline our areas of support and opportunities for improvement to ensure Build Canada Homes can help make meaningful progress on ending homelessness and housing need, reflecting our recent recommendations to the Build Canada Homes consultation.
After decades of government withdrawal from affordable housing, we welcome renewed federal leadership in affordable housing through Build Canada Homes. In particular, it is promising that Build Canada Homes aims to focus specifically on growing the supply of non-market, community housing, including through initial investments in transitional and supportive housing projects to help address and prevent homelessness. This responds directly to our recommendation and calls from across the housing sector to prioritize and maximize investments in the community housing sector.
Canada’s current stock of community housing makes up only 3.5 per cent of our overall housing stock. This represents half of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average and is far below the recommended level of 20 per cent needed to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis. In the absence of a profit motive, the community housing sector can deliver housing that is affordable for the long-term and accessible to low-income and other marginalized households, with proven social and economic benefits. While it is encouraging to see Build Canada Homes’ focus on non-market, community housing, it will be critical to ensure that community housing providers play a lead role in housing delivery to help rebalance the supply of affordable housing across the country and ensure homes are genuinely affordable for those in greatest need.
We also strongly support the incorporation of the Canada Rental Protection Fund into Build Canada Homes. This signals the government’s recognition of the importance of not only building new affordable housing, but protecting the existing stock of affordable housing, and the people who live there. This also responds directly to our recommendation to help preserve affordability and protect tenancies by supporting community housing providers to acquire private rental buildings.
Currently, we are losing affordable housing faster than we can build it, due to excessive rent increases, demolitions, and conversions. Estimates show that for every home built under government-funded programs, Canada loses 11 affordable rental homes. At the same time, new data shows that 28 per cent of people who have experienced homelessness have also experienced eviction, with disproportionate impacts on Indigenous, Black, and other racialized groups and significant physical and mental health implications. Moreover, evictions are increasingly due to landlord factors or renters’ inability to pay ever increasing rents, while homelessness rates continue to rise at an alarming rate (with recent data showing a nearly 80 per cent increase in homelessness since 2022). This demonstrates the importance of preserving existing affordability and protecting renters from excessive rent increases and evictions, to help stem the loss of affordable housing and prevent growing rates of homelessness.
Finally, we are glad to see the focus on providing federal lands for affordable housing development, including through the incorporation of the Canada Lands Company into Build Canada Homes. This responds to our previous recommendations related to the Public Lands for Homes Plan.
Given high land costs, prioritizing public land for non-market, community housing can help accelerate affordable housing development and ensure it remains affordable in perpetuity. Ensuring equitable access for Indigenous-led housing projects is critical to help advance reconciliation recognizing the forced displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands and the resulting disproportionate rates of Indigenous homelessness and housing need.
While it is promising to see the government acting quickly to launch Build Canada Homes, with initial projects focused on affordable, supportive, and transitional housing, it remains to be seen how the government will achieve the scale necessary to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis. Further details are also needed around the role that the private sector will play in Build Canada Homes, especially considering governments’ ongoing over-reliance on the private sector, which has failed to produce housing that is affordable to those in greatest need and fueled the financialization of housing.
A recent report from the Federal Housing Advocate shows the need to build or acquire a minimum of 200,000 non-market homes per year over the next 30 years to address housing need and homelessness. This includes 100,000 deeply affordable housing units for people with low incomes (i.e., subsidized, rent-geared-to-income housing, including supportive and transitional housing). Recent research from Maytree shows this could be achieved through a $40 billion annual federal investment.
With an initial $13 billion investment and less than 5,000 units announced to date (only some of which are targeted for those in greatest need), Build Canada Homes will need to demonstrate how it will scale up its impact, both in terms of investments and delivery of deeply affordable housing. Moreover, it will need to enforce strict affordability requirements (in addition to requirements related to other elements of the right to housing, such as security of tenure) to ensure it is delivering housing that meets the needs of those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis over the long-term.
As part of Canada’s commitment to advance the right to housing under the National Housing Strategy Act and as a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the government is required to eliminate homelessness and realize the right to adequate housing for all in the shortest possible time, using all appropriate means and the maximum of available resources. This means that Build Canada Homes must go beyond its general focus on restoring affordability and reducing homelessness to prioritize those in greatest housing need by setting clear human rights-based targets, timelines, monitoring, and reporting mechanisms to end homelessness and housing need as quickly as possible.
Reflecting our recommendations, Build Canada Homes should:
Build Canada Homes represents a generational shift and renewed focus on affordable housing development and preservation across the country, with some promising initial commitments. If implemented through a human rights-based approach, it could make a meaningful impact on ending and preventing homelessness and housing need and upholding the right to housing for all.
We look forward to further information on additional Build Canada Homes projects, priorities, and investments, including through the upcoming federal budget (expected on November 4, 2025). We will continue to work with sector partners to hold the government accountable to implementing evidence- and rights-based solutions to ensure everyone in Canada has access to a safe, secure, and affordable place to call home.
To address the growing housing and homelessness crisis across Canada, the federal government is creating Build Canada Homes, a new housing agency responsible for building affordable housing and modernizing the construction industry. In August 2025, the government released a Market Sounding Guide to gather feedback from housing sector stakeholders on how Build Canada Homes should operate and support the development of affordable housing. Below, we outline our key recommendations to ensure that Build Canada Homes can effectively tackle the housing and homelessness crisis by taking an evidence- and human rights-based approach.
We welcome Build Canada Homes’ focus on affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families, including partnerships with non-market community housing developers and providers such as Indigenous, non-profit, co-operative, and public housing. This is critical to ensure those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis have access to housing that meets their needs and that public funding is directed toward the public good.
We strongly support the Market Sounding Guide’s principle that private investors do not disproportionately benefit from public investments. Over-reliance on the private sector has failed to produce housing that is affordable and accessible to those in greatest need. At the same time, fiscal and regulatory incentives have fueled the financialization of housing. Financialization refers to the treatment of housing as a commodity and investment vehicle to maximize profits rather than as a fundamental human right. Financialization has led to rising rents, poor maintenance and more evictions, disproportionately impacting low-income, racialized and other marginalized communities.
In line with a human rights-based approach, it is also encouraging to see that Build Canada Homes aims to align funding with housing outcomes, including affordability. The National Housing Strategy Act formally established Canada’s commitment to progressively realize the right to housing. This includes setting clear targets, timelines, monitoring and reporting mechanisms to end homelessness and core housing need in the shortest time possible by committing the maximum of available resources and utilizing all appropriate means.
In our recent submission to the Build Canada Homes consultation, we highlight three key areas that the federal government should prioritize to ensure Build Canada Homes meets the needs of those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis.
1. Prioritize and maximize investments in the community housing sector by:
2. Uphold all elements of the right to adequate housing by:
3. Commit to robust monitoring and accountability mechanisms by:
We continue to engage closely with federal contacts on our recommendations. Together with sector partners, we are urging the government to adopt evidence- and rights-based solutions to the housing and homelessness crisis through Build Canada Homes. The government has also committed to providing ongoing engagement opportunities, with a focus on Indigenous partners.
We will monitor updates on the launch of Build Canada Homes over the coming weeks and months. We welcome individuals and organizations to reiterate and amplify our recommendations to ensure Build Canada Homes prioritizes the development and preservation of truly affordable housing through a human rights-based approach.
To inform the development of its 2025 budget, the federal government is holding a series of consultations to gather ideas and input from the public. The 2025 budget comes in the midst of deep social and economic turmoil across the country, which has been magnified by a trade war with the United States. Meanwhile, we continue to face an escalating housing and homelessness crisis, which is disproportionately impacting communities already facing barriers to socioeconomic justice and equity. Below, we outline the current context in Canada, our recommendations for the 2025 federal budget, and ongoing advocacy opportunities to urge the government to take an evidence- and human rights-based approach to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis.
Across the country, renters are facing increasingly precarious conditions, including excessive rents, unfair evictions, renovictions, demovictions, disrepair, discrimination, and many other issues. While rental housing supply and vacancy rates are increasing across the country, this has not translated into greater affordability, as new units are too expensive for low- and moderate-income renters and are not leading to meaningful reductions in rent prices. Instead, rents continue to rise year-over-year. Excessive rent increases, demolitions and conversions mean we are not only losing affordable housing faster than we can build it, we are also seeing an alarming increase in homelessness. In response, some provincial and municipal governments are taking misguided approaches that criminalize people experiencing homelessness, rather than building and protecting affordable housing and providing necessary health, income, and other socioeconomic supports.
When renters have safe, secure, and affordable homes, they have stronger social and economic outcomes, from better physical and mental health to greater productivity and economic participation. From both a moral and fiscal perspective, building and protecting affordable housing – and the people who live there – is paramount to addressing the rising rates of housing precarity, displacement, and homelessness across the country.
It was promising to see an ongoing focus on the housing and homelessness crisis throughout the 2025 federal election campaign, including recognition of the active role that all levels of government must play to tackle the crisis. To ensure a healthy, equitable, and sustainable future for all, the federal government must prioritize those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis: renters and people experiencing homelessness.
In our recent submission to the first 2025 federal pre-budget consultation held by the Standing Committee on Finance (FINA), we highlighted five key areas requiring urgent and sustained government action to ensure that everyone in Canada has a safe, secure, and affordable place to call home.
1. Provide immediate support to renters and people experiencing homelessness by:
2. Protect renters from excessive rents and unfair evictions by:
3. Build and protect deeply affordable housing by:
4. Combat the financialization of housing by:
5. Uphold housing as a human right by:
We are continuing to engage closely with our federal contacts and sector partners to urge the government to adopt evidence- and rights-based solutions to the housing and homelessness crisis in the 2025 federal budget. Following the initial FINA consultation, we encourage individuals and organizations to participate in the second pre-budget consultation held by the Department of Finance, by completing the questionnaire and/or sending in a formal submission by August 28, 2025. We welcome individuals and organizations to reiterate and amplify the recommendations outlined in our pre-budget submission to help hold the government accountable to meeting the needs of those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis.
This guide is designed to provide housing providers in Ontario with information about their obligations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA).
Housing providers are faced with the complex challenge of adhering to municipal and provincial laws and responding to the diverse needs of their renters. The purpose of this guide is to help clarify their requirements under the AODA. It also covers how the AODA works with other legislation and offers useful tips to housing providers on how to ensure that their business practices promote accessibility.
This International Women’s Day, we are called to reflect on the barriers and biases that impede women from fully realizing their human rights; and importantly, to reflect on what we can do to break down these barriers and biases.
The right to adequate housing is a human right. However, women in Canada are often impeded from fully realizing this right due to policies and programs that do not consider their specific needs and circumstances. Last June, the National Indigenous Housing Network and Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network filed two Human Rights Claims to review the systemic denial of the equal right to housing of women and gender-diverse people, which spotlight the inherently systemic violations of the right to housing.
Critically, the Canadian government has relied on a narrow definition of homelessness, which excludes women’s experiences of gender-based violence and hidden homelessness. Definitions of “homelessness” and “chronic homelessness” used in government policy do not reflect the distinct ways women, girls, women-led families, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people experience homelessness. Definitions tend to be Eurocentric and fail to account for Indigenous ways of understanding and experiencing homelessness.
To fully realize the right to adequate housing, a broader definition of homelessness must be adopted.
That is why the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR), the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) and the National Indigenous Housing Network (NIHN) are calling on the federal government to expand its definition of homelessness to include the experiences of women and gender-diverse people, centering ways in which Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people define their homelessness. Our collective efforts to end homelessness must be inclusive of all experiences across Canada.
Despite common perceptions that it is primarily men who experience homelessness, almost half of the people experiencing homelessness in Canada are women, girls and gender diverse people.
However, while housing and homelessness supports are generally framed in gender-neutral terms, women have unique needs and experiences in housing instability and homelessness. Women experience homelessness differently for two main reasons: (1) they frequently have different reasons for becoming homeless; and (2) they navigate homelessness differently. These experiences are tied to gender, and other group identities like race, ethnicity, disability, immigration status, social and economic status and gender identity etc. Based on these identities, women face multiple forms of marginalization.
In the context of inherent Indigenous rights, colonial policies and mechanisms attempt to displace Indigenous women, girls, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people. The lack of action on the Calls to Justice from the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Report and Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report has created a failure to provide safe, adequate, and culturally appropriate housing. The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) mentions the need for safe and secure housing more than 400 times.
Women commonly become vulnerable to homelessness due to poverty, lower wages, intimate partner violence, sexual abuse, addiction issues, mental and physical health challenges, and issues around childcare.
The Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey identifies that women disproportionately experience poverty and financial instability. Women in Ontario on average live on income that is 28% lower than the average income for men, are over-represented in minimum wage and part-time jobs, and assume unequal responsibilities in housework and childcare.
As a result, they face greater challenges finding adequate and affordable housing, leading many women to seek out housing that is unsafe, inadequate or unaffordable, and increasing their vulnerability to homelessness. CCHR has reported that more than a quarter of women-led households in Canada are in core housing need, while 90% of families using emergency shelters are headed by single women. This situation is made worse by the increased discrimination that women – in particular single mothers/parents, those receiving social assistance, those who are racialized, newcomers, Indigenous, or with a disability – face in accessing housing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, women were disproportionately impacted by income and job loss due to their overrepresentation in part-time employment and in the sectors most heavily impacted by the pandemic. The pandemic exacerbated the housing needs of women, who were less likely to have savings, and put them at a higher risk of experiencing homelessness. Racialized women experienced additional impacts as they earn approximately 58 cents for every dollar earned by non-racialized men and are more likely to work in lower-paying occupations.
Indigenous women, in particular, are overrepresented amongst women who are homeless, and are 15 times more likely to use a homeless shelter than non-Indigenous women. The 2019 MMIWG Report highlights that Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or missing than any other group of women in Canada and are 16 times more likely to be murdered or missing than white women. A lack of Indigenous-led housing programs leads to unsafe living conditions, inadequate housing, unaffordability, and child apprehension.
Moreover, women account for 79% of people experiencing violence by an intimate partner, while women who are Indigenous, racialized, with a disability, refugees, or identify as LGBTQ2S+ face disproportionately high rates of violence. Research shows that experiencing violence, in particular intimate partner violence, is a key reason that women and their dependents lose access to stable housing or experience homelessness. A report by the Canadian Women’s Foundation found that women who leave their partners and become single parents are five times more likely to live in poverty, while women leaving violence encounter other systemic and structural challenges to accessing stable housing, such as being turned away from emergency shelters due to capacity issues, and discrimination from landlords and property managers who refuse to rent to them based on their gender and other identifying characteristics.
These challenges increase women’s risk of experiencing homelessness. This cycle is illustrated by the Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey, which found that 47% of women surveyed reported a breakup as the reason for losing access to housing, the most commonly reported reason for women losing their housing, and 75.2% reported being survivors of abuse and trauma.
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness also found that discriminatory practices around social assistance, housing support and child welfare present additional barriers for low-income women to access housing, and interventions from child services are shown to increase risks of homelessness for both mothers and their children. This is in part due to social assistance systems cutting entitlements for mothers whose children enter the child welfare system, a response that further challenges their ability to retain stable and adequate housing.
Just as women have different pathways to homelessness, they also navigate homelessness differently.
The Pan-Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey has found a severe lack of gender-specific supportive, transitional and permanent affordable housing to meet the needs of women who are at risk of losing their housing. Critically, as of 2019, 68% of shelter beds were co-ed or dedicated to men, compared to 13% dedicated to women, while many women avoid co-ed shelters due to the increased potential for violence in these spaces. This shortage is especially severe for Indigenous women, with data showing that 70% of northern reserves do not have dedicated spaces for women escaping violence.
Moreover, women are exposed to different risks when experiencing homelessness. Research underscores the cyclical nature of violence and homelessness for women. Just as violence is a pathway to homelessness, women are much more likely than men to experience violence and exploitation due to being homeless. The same survey shows that 37.5 % of young women and 41.3% of trans and non-binary people who are homeless experience sexual assault, compared to just 8.2% of men.
With fewer formal housing and homelessness supports available, women more frequently rely on informal, precarious, and at times dangerous supports to stabilize their housing. These can include strategies like couch-surfing with friends and family, staying in substandard or unsafe accommodation, staying in violent or exploitative relationships, and exchanging sex for shelter. These situations represent forms of “hidden homelessness” that exist on the margins of the formal homelessness support and shelter system.
In 2017, the Canadian government introduced the National Housing Strategy (NHS) to address Canada’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis. The NHS introduced several programs to prevent and respond to homelessness but did not adopt the broad definition of homelessness recognized by the United Nations (UN). The UN definition of homelessness recognizes that homelessness is interrelated with poverty and includes people living in temporary accommodation and inadequate housing without access to security of tenure or basic services. This broad definition encompasses the types of hidden homelessness often experienced by women, including those who are couch surfing, incarcerated, hospitalized, being sexually exploited, exiting foster care, or those living in unsafe or unstable housing.
Most definitions fail to account for the unique structural and systemic oppressions that shape homelessness for Indigenous women, girls, gender-diverse peoples including: genocidal violence, intergenerational trauma, institutional betrayal, racism and discrimination, sexual violence and homicide, and criminalization.
Concerningly, these experiences are not captured under the NHS’s narrow definition of homelessness, which focuses on more visible forms of chronic homelessness. The NHS defines homelessness as a “situation in which someone does not have a permanent address, or stable, permanent or appropriate housing, or the means to acquire it.” As a result, research and data gathering approaches, as well as program design and funding under the NHS, have focused on chronic or visible homelessness. For example, one of the ways that the Canadian government has determined homelessness statistics is by focusing on shelter capacity and occupancy. However, it is estimated that 7% of women in Canada experience hidden homelessness at some point in their lives. Therefore, using shelter occupancy to measure the rates of homelessness excludes large numbers of women experiencing hidden homelessness, for whom both unsheltered homelessness and shelter use pose threats to their safety and an increased risk of child apprehension for women who have children in their care. This systemic undercounting makes it challenging to estimate the number of women experiencing homelessness in Canada.
Homelessness, chronic homelessness, housing need, and affordability definitions in current federal policy do not reflect the experiences of housing precarity or homelessness, nor the depth of poverty women and gender-diverse people live in, which means it cannot possibly hope to address these issues at a foundational level.
The lack of national data on hidden homelessness has led to the exclusion of key populations of women to receive support from homelessness programs and has produced inadequate policy responses to address their needs. These gaps in responses to women’s emergency housing needs have contributed to the significant shortage in shelters for women, as mentioned above. In addition, programs under the NHS, such as Reaching Home, which is considered one of the main funding streams dedicated to ending homelessness, have also failed to account for the specific factors that make women vulnerable to homelessness, such as lower wages, lack of affordable childcare and being the primary caretakers in the family, as well as gender-based violence.
The Canadian government must change its definition of homelessness to include the experiences of women and gender-diverse people, and center Indigenous ways of understanding and experiencing homelessness, to effectively address their needs and advance the right to housing.
Tell the federal government: Canada’s homelessness definition must be inclusive of women and gender-diverse people.
The holiday season is upon us. For many, this is the time to relax at home and unwind with loved ones. However, for some renters in Ontario they may be dealing with their landlord who carries out an illegal eviction during this time and locks them out of their rental home. It is important to know your rights as a renter when faced with an illegal lockout and how you can get back into your home.
Your tenancy can only be legally ended in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). If your landlord wants to end your tenancy, they must serve you with a notice to end your tenancy, and then file an application with the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) for an eviction based on a reason recognized in the RTA. If your landlord has filed an application to evict, the LTB will send you a notice of this application with a hearing date. The hearing provides you and your landlord with an opportunity to attend a hearing and describe your circumstances to an adjudicator. If the adjudicator finds that the grounds for your eviction are reasonable and fair, then they can grant an eviction order to end your tenancy. This eviction order can only be carried out by the Sheriff’s office, also known as the Court Enforcement Office. Your landlord or anyone acting in the interest of your landlord cannot carry out an eviction order on their own.
If your landlord changes your locks and prevents you from entering your home, this is illegal. Your landlord is not allowed to evict you themselves, and they are not allowed to alter a lock without providing a replacement key to you.
It is critical to act quickly if you have been illegally locked out. Taking any of the following steps could help you get back into your home. Document everything that happens related to being locked out of your unit and trying to get back in:
As long as no one else has moved into the unit, the adjudicator at the LTB can require your landlord to allow you back in. Bring an application immediately to give your landlord minimal time to move a new tenant into the unit. The LTB will likely not let you back in once another tenant has moved in, which is why it’s so important to move quickly.
Notices of termination (e.g. N4s, N5s, N6s N7s, N8s, N12s, N13s) are not eviction orders – they are just documents from your landlord requesting that you move out on a specified date. If you receive a notice to end your tenancy and you remain in your unit, your landlord can only end your tenancy by applying to the Landlord and Tenant Board. A hearing will then be held, which is your chance to present your circumstances to the adjudicator.
You do not have to move out on the date specified in the notice, and your landlord does not have a right to lock you out on that date.
This guide provides condominium boards with a clear overview of their obligations under Ontario’s Human Rights Code. It also informs condominium boards of their obligations regarding accessibility standards under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).
In this guide, you’ll find information about:
This guide and adjoining sample policies offer a framework for housing providers to implement the principles of the right to housing. This is done through exploring their relationship to the right to housing and through the implementation of housing policies that expand their residents’ access to secure and adequate housing.
This resource was produced under the project entitled Housing Providers Implementing the Right to Housing in the Supportive Housing Sector. This project received funding from the National Housing Strategy’s Demonstrations Initiative. However, the views expressed are the personal views of the author and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) accepts no responsibility for them.
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