Canada’s National Housing Strategy is failing Indigenous women and children

People experiencing homelessness face multiple, complex personal and structural barriers to finding stable housing.

That burden, however, is not distributed evenly.

Indigenous women and girls are vastly over-represented among Canada’s homeless and precariously unhoused, and they experience some of the most troubling human rights violations.

With the National Housing Strategy (NHS)‘s first 10-year term about to expire, this is a pointed moment to take stock of this disparity.

It’s time to ask whether the strategy has delivered on its central promise of housing as a human right.

Results from a research project colleagues and I led in Calgary identified several issues for Indigenous women seeking affordable housing.

In addition to limited housing stock at affordable rent and being turned away when property owners realized they were Indigenous, women reported a climate of harassment and fear.

They worried for their own safety and their children’s due to other tenants and even landlords.

Examples included being evicted for smudging, landlords entering units whenever they chose and the need for extra security measures to protect their families from threats or fear of violence.

The NHS has the goal to ensure that “everyone in Canada has access to housing that meets their needs.” Our research suggests that promise is not being kept; not for Indigenous women, and not for their children.

What NHS promised The NHS launched in 2017, backed by a financial investment of more than $115 billion and a promise to create or repair more than 500,000 housing units.

It is grounded in a human rights framework, and promises to reduce the number of people in chronic homelessness by 50 per cent.

The human rights framework of the NHS includes claims that housing investments must prioritize those most in need, including women and children fleeing family violence, seniors, Indigenous Peoples and people with disabilities.

It also requires that housing policy should be grounded in the principles of inclusion, participation, accountability and non-discrimination.