Housing as a Human Right: Tackling Homelessness and the Housing Crisis
What if we outlawed homelessness instead of criminalizing the experience of being unhoused?
Ottawa, ON–The amended National Housing Strategy Act today was signed into law, enshrining the right to housing for all Canadians.
After years of advocacy from the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN), and following the recommendations of the National Housing Council (NHC), the government today affirmed its responsibility to not just “progressively realize” the right to housing, but to treat it as a protected right for all Canadians.
The previous version of the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA), passed in 2019, brought Canada in line with international standards, which require the right to housing to be ensured not only through policies and programs but also through independent monitoring and access to hearings and effective remedies. What it lacked, however, was any meaningful accountability for the commitment to that right…until today.
After almost five years of an increasingly worsening cost of living and housing crisis across the country, people were moved to call on their government to do better for the lower and middle classes who don’t own homes, but equally deserve an affordable, accessible and habitable place to live.
The change supports the government’s recently published Canada Housing Plan, committing billions of dollars to: build 3.9 million homes, make it easier to own or rent a home, and help Canadians who cannot afford a home.
The step further?
Now, like the Canada Health Act, all federal funding transfers to assist provincial and municipal governments with administrating housing now come with the condition of Compliance to the national act and its values of housing affordability, accessibility, universality, habitability–housing as a human right. Now, all provinces and municipalities also have to get on board with “the progressive realization of the right to housing.”
Critics raise concerns about this new federal leadership role in administering housing, citing concerns that developers will turn away from investing in Canada due to some of its stipulations, like federally mandated rent increase controls and protection from development-based displacement.
Housing advocates, however, are celebrating this new move, declaring it the first real step forward in a long time towards a truly human rights based approach to housing, with real accountability measures to hold governments accountable to eradicating homelessness.
BACK TO REALITY…
Today’s story was inspired by my frustration with the recent US Supreme Court ruling that asserts US cities’ rights to ban the unhoused from sleeping in public.
The main creative constraint in The Climateverse is that our stories always start from yesterday’s real-world reality.
So while I originally started a draft that imagined that the Democrats “packed the court” with more progressive judges, and then saw a different but similar case that threw out this case’s precedent, it all just felt too unwieldy of a parallel reality to plot for a simple flash fiction story.
But that does not mean it’s impossible!
It would just require a few more steps than the story presented today.
I’d love to hear from you!
What real-world news story is frustrating you this week? Maybe we can plot an alternate reality sometime soon in The Climateverse.
Making it real
If housing as a human right speaks to you, here are some orgs you can check out and support:
In the U.S.:
In Canada:
And make sure the Federal Housing Advocate knows your story!
Till next time,
Alicia