Last week, we had the privilege of attending and contributing to the PLEAC 2026 Conference in Ottawa, co-hosted by Community Legal Education Ontario and the Ontario Justice Education Network.
The PLEAC Conference is the annual national gathering hosted by the Public Legal Education Association of Canada (PLEAC), a national nonprofit organization that serves as an umbrella organization for public legal education and information (PLEI) groups across Canada. The conference aims to bring together public legal educators, legal clinic and legal aid professionals, community organizations, and academics to share knowledge, reflect, and learn together.
In York Region, nearly 47% of renter households spend 30% or more of their income on housing, according to the 2021 Census. In 2024, 878 people in York Region were experiencing homelessness, including unsheltered individuals, those in emergency shelters, and those in transitional housing. These figures show the urgent need for coordinated local supports to help residents access stable, affordable housing.
Our Community Lawyer, Ayesha Adamjee, and Outreach and Education Advisor, Jessie Tang, led a workshop on a holistic community approach to housing support in York Region, alongside Camilla Singh, Coordinator at Agincourt Community Services Association, and Michelle Sutherland, Director of Legal Services at the Community Legal Clinic of York Region. The session explored how coordinated local networks can strengthen public legal education and address housing instability.
“This workshop reminded us that collaboration is key. By connecting legal and non-legal community agencies, we can strengthen supports that help more people access safe, secure, and affordable housing in York Region,” said Ayesha and Jessie.
We would like to thank the Public Legal Education Association of Canada (PLEAC), Community Legal Education Ontario, the Ontario Justice Education Network, our workshop partners at Agincourt Community Services Association and the Community Legal Clinic of York Region, and all the participants who joined us. We are especially grateful to United Way Greater Toronto for supporting our work in York Region and enabling our team to contribute to this important conference.
Earlier this month, we were pleased to have our Director of Policy, Research, and Law Reform, Margaret Flynn, as a featured speaker at the Niagara Roundtable on Housing.
The Niagara Roundtable brings together seasoned experts and emerging leaders to foster informed dialogue and advance action on the policy, social, and economic issues shaping Canada’s future.
The roundtable brought together leading voices, including Honourable David Hickey, Minister responsible for the New Brunswick Housing Corporation; William Strange, Professor, Economic Analysis and Policy, Camrost Felcorp Chair in Urban Economics at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management; and Taya Cook, Executive Vice President at Urban Capital, for a solutions-focused discussion on Canada’s housing challenges.
The discussion focused on three key areas:
– The impact of high housing costs on young people and marginalized communities
– Housing challenges in communities beyond major urban centres
– Various perspectives on more inclusive housing outcomes, including rights-based perspectives
Canada continues to face a growing housing and homelessness crisis. While the crisis affects people from all walks of life, it disproportionately impacts those already facing barriers, including Indigenous people, Black and other racialized people, 2SLGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, seniors, women, youth, and low-income households.
Drawing on CCHR’s policy and client services work, Margaret highlighted how housing insecurity affects stability in people’s daily lives, undermining safety, health, and the ability to fully participate in their communities.
“Access to housing is fundamentally about stability. Without security of tenure, our communities cannot build the foundation they need to thrive,” said Margaret Flynn.
Building on these conversations, we remain focused on advancing the right to housing, ensuring that everyone in Canada has access to a safe, secure, and affordable home. By highlighting the real-world impacts of housing insecurity and advocating for evidence- and rights-based solutions, we aim to support stronger, more stable communities across the country.
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:
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.
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