The right to housing in a neoliberal and colonial context

ABSTRACT

In Canada, emerging discussions about colonialism and ongoing retrenchment from the welfare state, including social housing, accentuate the urgency of addressing housing need in ways that uphold both human and Indigenous rights. Through questionnaires and interviews with 28 non-profit housing providers in British Columbia, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, this paper examines the intersection of human and Indigenous rights with the provision of low-rent non-market housing. It identifies barriers and strategies to advancing the right to housing in Canada’s settler-colonial capitalist context and, in doing so, articulates possibilities for new policies upholding housing as a human and Indigenous right.

KEYWORDS:

• non-profit housing
• UNDRIP
• right to housing
• Indigenous
• Canada

1. Introduction

In 2017, after decades of work by housing advocates, the federal government announced the National Housing Strategy, which emphasized that ‘housing rights are human rights’ (Government of Canada, 2017, p. 8). The 2019 National Housing Strategy Act enshrined the right to housing in law, committing Canada to the progressive realization of the right to housing.¹ However, while the National Housing Strategy offers billions in funding for affordable housing development, it has been critiqued as being too focused on market development, and for not providing the long-term subsidies needed for very low-rent housing (Beer et al., 2022). It has also been criticized for not sufficiently addressing off-reserve Indigenous housing need (Indigenuity Consulting Group Inc and Aboriginal Housing and Management Association, 2022). While historically Canada’s federally-subsidized non-profit housing sector was seen as a ‘permanent stock of good-quality, nonprofit social housing’ and a solution to housing need (Dreier & Hulchanski, 1993, p. 45), since 1993 the federal government has sharply reduced both funding for social housing and transferred responsibility to the provinces (Suttor, 2016). As a result, the right to housing continues to be upheld unequally across the country, with substantially higher levels of housing need among Indigenous people, women, newcomers, racialized people, people with disabilities and those living in poverty, especially renters (CMHC, 2023).

In addition to housing advocacy, the past two decades have seen a resurgence in Indigenous advocacy across the country. Canada is a settler colonial nation, imposed on Inuit, Métis and First Nation territories, and its policies, including attempts to destroy Indigenous languages and knowledges through residential schools, have long sought control of lands and resources (Manuel & Derrickson, 2015; Joseph, 2018). Recent national inquiries into residential schools and the disproportionate violence experienced by Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people have highlighted both the impacts of Canada’s ongoing colonialism and the strengths of Indigenous peoples in resisting said colonialism (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). These inquiries, along with increasingly visible Indigenous advocacy movements, have launched a nation-wide discussion about reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. They have paralleled a growing activism among Indigenous-led non-profit housing providers, who have been working to build organizational and governance structures to support low-rent housing for Indigenous people across Canada (Indigenous Caucus – Canadian Housing & Renewal Association, 2023). The intersection of calls for reconciliation with the National Housing Strategy emphasizes the importance of upholding both Indigenous and human rights through housing.

Scholars have long noted that the right to housing cannot be understood in isolation (Hohmann, 2013). It is indivisible from and interdependent with other rights, and its realization (or lack thereof) is shaped by broader socio-economic systems. For this reason, through questionnaires and interviews with non-profit housing providers in three Canadian provinces, this study examines the intersection of human and Indigenous rights with the provision of low-rent non-market housing in Canada. More specifically, it examines some of the possibilities and barriers to upholding the right to housing within Canada’s neoliberal and colonial context. It argues that current housing policy will not solve housing need; instead, a more radical and nuanced approach that addresses Indigenous and other rights is needed to fully implement the right to housing.

The paper begins with an overview of the right to housing and Indigenous rights, and their implementation in Canada. After a description of the study’s research methods, it investigates barriers and strategies identified by non-profit housing providers to better understand the application of the right to housing on the ground. It concludes with an analysis of what needs to change, in both policy and practice, to fully implement the right to housing in Canada.

2. The right to housing and Indigenous rights

Individual human rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living, are protected through international agreements and international law. States must ensure that a ‘minimum core’ of these rights be implemented so that individuals’ basic rights are satisfied, must provide substantial resources to fulfil these rights, and are expected to ‘make progress towards the full realization of the right’ (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2008; Hohmann, 2019, p. 19). Likewise, collective rights, including Indigenous peoples’ ‘self-determination, their right to autonomy or self-government, their rights to their traditional lands, territories and resources, as well as their right to reparation and redress for wrongs they have suffered’ are addressed in many international agreements (Lenzerini, 2019, p. 52). Despite Canada agreeing to uphold these rights and although 90% of Canadian households live in housing that is in adequate, suitable and affordable, the other 10% do not – or lack housing entirely (Statistics Canada, 2022).

2.1. The right to housing

First mentioned in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the right to housing came into force in 1976, with the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).² The right to housing is elaborated in several international treaties, highlighting the importance of eliminating discrimination in housing based on race, gender, age, and ability, among other factors (see Table 1).³ The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights identified seven key characteristics of adequate housing, which are security of tenure; availability of ‘facilities essential for health, security, comfort and nutrition;’ affordability; habitability; accessibility; location; and cultural adequacy (United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, 1991 s.8). Each of these characteristics must be addressed for the right to housing to be upheld.

Table 1. A chronology of housing-related and Indigenous rights.

Year		International Instruments
1948		Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1965		International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
1966		International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
1979		Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
1989		Convention on the Rights of the Child
2006		Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
2007		Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Year		Canadian Law
1982		Constitution Act, 1982
1982		Charter of Rights and Freedoms
2019		National Housing Strategy Act
2021		United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act

2.2. Indigenous rights

Indigenous rights cover a wide range of rights and protections and are, unlike the UDHR or ICESCR, both collective and individual rights (Agrawal & Kaplinsky, 2022). The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) outlines the distinct rights held by Indigenous peoples. Central to these rights is the right to self-determination, by virtue of which Indigenous people ‘freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’⁴ The right to self-determination also includes the right to self-government, as well as the right to make decisions about their ‘distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions,’ and their languages, knowledges, education systems and territories.⁵

Housing is explicitly mentioned in two articles of the UNDRIP. Article 21 states that Indigenous peoples have the right ‘to the improvement of their economic and social conditions,’ including housing, and Article 23 states that ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to be actively involved in developing and determining health, housing and other economic and social programs affecting them.’⁶ These rights are also connected to Indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands and territories, to not be dispossessed of such lands and territories, and to be compensated for loss of lands and territories.⁷ When combined with the seven characteristics of adequate housing, the UNDRIP emphasizes the importance of Indigenous-led housing solutions to housing need for Indigenous peoples.

2.3. Legal frameworks for the right to housing and Indigenous rights in Canada

The right to housing and Indigenous rights are protected through two key sections of the Canadian Constitution. First, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms—the first part of the Constitution – states that Canadians hold ‘the right to life, liberty and security of the person,’ the right to equality and to not be discriminated against.⁸ Second, Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution recognizes and affirms the ‘existing aboriginal and treaty rights of … the Indian,⁹ Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada,’¹⁰ and Section 25 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms emphasizes that the rights guaranteed in the Charter cannot supersede Indigenous rights.¹¹

The right to housing and Indigenous rights have also recently been recognized in two Acts of Parliament. The 2019 National Housing Strategy Act committed the Government of Canada to ‘further[ing] the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing as recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.’¹² To implement the Act, the Government of Canada must continue to provide a National Housing Strategy and create a Federal Housing Advocate and National Housing Council, whose roles are to monitor the implementation of the National Housing Strategy and provide recommendations to the designated minister on housing issues. Then, in 2021, Canada passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, which requires Canada to ‘take all measures necessary to ensure the laws of Canada are consistent with the Declaration’ (Department of Justice Canada, 2021, para. 3). It requires that Canada develop an action plan to implement UNDRIP, including to ‘eliminate all forms of violence, racism and discrimination against Indigenous peoples … [and] to promote mutual respect and understanding’ (Department of Justice Canada, 2021, para. 4).

2.4. Implementing the right to housing and Indigenous rights in Canada

Despite the rights and legal frameworks described above, homelessness, housing precarity and housing need continue at crisis levels in Canada. In 2021, 1.45 million households (or 10.1% of households) lived in housing that was unaffordable, in poor condition, or too small for the household (Statistics Canada, 2023), and at least 235,000 people access homeless shelters each year (with the total number of people lacking housing estimated to be substantially higher) (Gaetz et al., 2016). Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by housing need, with 124,000 households (18% of households) living in housing that was unaffordable, in poor condition, or too small for the household, and about 37,500 Indigenous people experiencing homelessness each year (Segel-Brown et al., 2021). For individuals and households experiencing housing need, implementation of the right to housing is an urgent concern.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not explicitly include a right to housing, even though many of the rights listed in the Charter cannot be implemented without adequate housing. While Canadian courts have generally recognized negative rights to housing (the protection against violations of housing rights), they have not recognized positive rights to housing (the obligation of the state to ensure access to housing) (Heffernan et al., 2015; van den Berg, 2019). Likewise, progress on the implementation of the UNDRIP has been slow despite the Constitution’s recognition of Indigenous rights (Borrows et al., 2019), and despite two recent major national inquiries highlighting how Indigenous rights, and especially the right to self-determination, along with human rights, are not just matters of public policy, but are rooted in international law (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019).

Responsibility for implementing human and Indigenous rights lies with the state, which is complicated when the state is a colonial entity with a long history of attempted genocide against Indigenous nations (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).¹³ Housing has long been used as a colonial tool to assert Canadian sovereignty over territory and, through forced resettlement and the imposition of European-style housing, to control First Nations, Inuit and Métis nations (Tester & Kulchyski, 2007; Hohmann, 2013; McCartney, 2016). The poor quality and availability of housing in many rural and remote First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities has resulted in crowding, over-use, and often, migration to the city (Cornet & Lendor, 2002; McCartney, 2016). Experiences of housing are often gendered as women, girls and gender-diverse people have distinct needs and access to housing (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). Because responsibility for the negotiation and implementation of international treaties and nation-to-nation relationships between Indigenous nations and Canada is held by the federal government, municipal and provincial governments may not be prepared to address the needs of Indigenous people (Peters & Walker, 2005). Indigenous homelessness and housing need is therefore inextricably connected to displacement from territories and nations (McCartney, 2016; Christensen, 2017; Thistle, 2017; Agrawal & Zoe, 2021).

Canada’s capitalism cannot be separated from its colonialism: its economy is built upon the extraction of wealth from natural resources located in and on Indigenous territories (Coulthard, 2014; Toews, 2018; Alook et al., 2023). Since the Second World War, housing has been used as an economic booster through federal and provincial housing programs that subsidize market housing (Bacher, 1993). At the same time, the post-war long boom of the 1950s to early 1990s saw substantial government investment in non-market social housing as part of the public programs and institutions that made up the social safety net (Suttor, 2016). About 5% of households live in public, non-profit and co-operative housing (Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, 2022). However, since the 1990s, the shift towards a neoliberal state has gradually transferred much responsibility for social programs, including housing, to the private market (Bezanson & Luxton, 2006; Skelton, 2015; Gill, 2021). The federal retrenchment from social housing funding, beginning in 1993, reduced availability of social housing and devolved responsibility to the provinces (Suttor, 2016). This roll-back neoliberal austerity project is paralleled by roll-out neoliberal government policies that support the commodification and financialization of housing, including through securitization, Real Estate Investment Trusts, short term rentals, and gentrification, thus intensifying housing’s role as an investment product (Peck & Tickell, 2002; Walks & Clifford, 2015; August, 2020; Farha & Schwan, 2021). Together, these roll-out and roll-back practices result in increased housing disparity between low- and high-income households, and reflect a move ‘towards the abandonment of the conceptual meaning of housing as a social good’ (Rolnik, 2013, p. 1059; Zhu et al., 2023). Although the National Housing Strategy Act recognized the right to housing, the National Housing Strategy itself offers minimal support for low-rent and non-market housing. Instead, most of its programs and funding will result in market housing for median-income households (Beer et al., 2022). These policies respond to market demand for housing, while ignoring low-income households’ social need for housing (Hulchanski & Shapcott, 2004). When combined with the gradual defunding of public, non-profit and co-operative housing and a shift to demand-side housing allowances, the result is that private capital is now seen as responsible for addressing the right to housing (Farha & Schwan, 2021; Cooper, 2022; Leviten-Reid et al., 2024).

These two systemic factors – colonialism and neoliberal capitalism – highlight two key aspects of housing need in Canada. First, current government policies primarily place responsibility for low-cost housing in markets that do not produce housing without profit, leaving out those who cannot afford housing. Second, the housing market relies on the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their territories, and as such creates a distinct form of housing need for Indigenous households. As such, claims to housing as a human and Indigenous right challenge Canada’s colonial and capitalist policies, and underscore housing need as a political choice requiring radical intervention (Brandon & Silver, 2015; Hamill, 2018; Alook et al., 2023; Tranjan, 2023).

3. Methods

To understand the relationship between human and Indigenous rights, and the provision of low-rent non-market housing within a settler colonial and neoliberal capitalist context, this study focused on non-profit providers of off-reserve housing¹⁴ in three Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Manitoba, and New Brunswick (see Table 2). These three provinces include a range of community types, from large and medium urban areas to smaller rural and farming towns, to northern and isolated communities, and each province has a distinct policy approach to social housing provision yet is shaped by federal policy and funding.

Table 2. Housing need in British Columbia, Manitoba and New Brunswick.

	Total population	Households in housing need (%)	Households in housing need (n)
British Columbia	5,000,879	13.4	257,090
Manitoba	1,342,153	10.1	48,810
New Brunswick	775,610	6.2	20,245

Source: Statistics Canada (2023).

Organizations in each province were selected to reflect the wide diversity of non-profit housing provider types, including size, location, age, Indigenous/non-Indigenous, etc. (see Table 3). Each organization’s executive director or board chair was invited by email or phone to participate; in some cases, a different staff person was delegated by the organization to participate. Twenty-eight housing providers (nine from each of New Brunswick and Manitoba, and 10 from British Columbia) filled out the questionnaire, and of those, 24 participated in interviews completed in late 2022. Of the 24 interviews, nine were from British Columbia, seven from Manitoba, and eight from New Brunswick. In total, six of the participating housing providers were Indigenous-led organizations.

Table 3. Characteristics of participating organizations.

	British Columbia	Manitoba	New Brunswick
Geography
Large and medium urban area	6	3	2
Small town, rural and northern area	4	6	7
Size
Large: over 400 units	4	2	1
Medium: 50–399 units	5	6	3
Small: less than 50 units	1	1	5
Leadership
Indigenous	3	2	1
Non-Indigenous	7	7	8
Established
Pre-1993	9	8	7
Post-1993	1	1	2
Total
Total respondents	10	9	9

Data was collected using the Delphi method. The Delphi method uses questionnaires and interviews in an iterative process to build knowledge among researchers and participants (Linstone & Turoff, 1975; Milligan et al., 2013). Because social and public policy involves creative and judgmental decision-making, the Delphi method’s approach draws on expert knowledge to formulate potential scenarios and policy directions (Adler & Ziglio, 1996). This study builds on previous Delphi studies of non-profit housing provision conducted in Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States (Mullins, 2006; Gruis & Nieboer, 2007; Milligan et al., 2013; Bratt et al., 2018). Ethical oversight of the research was provided by the University of Manitoba’s Research Ethics Board 2.

First, emailed questionnaires (Neuman, 2000) used Likert scales to gather quantitative data from each organization, focusing on two key areas. The first area focused on factors driving organizational change, where respondents were asked to assess how much each factor had changed over the past five years, and how important the factor was as a driver for decision-making. The second area asked about factors shaping each organization’s strategic positioning, and respondents were asked to assess the extent to which one priority prevailed against the other five years ago, does so now, and will do in five years’ time. Respondents were also invited to identify the three most significant current issues affecting their organization. The data from the questionnaires were then anonymized, compiled into charts, and shared with the respondents.

Second, at each interview (Mason, 2018), the questionnaire responses of the interviewee were highlighted, and respondents were asked to reflect on their organization’s positioning relative to other respondents (who remained anonymous). This process enabled a more nuanced discussion of actual and anticipated challenges and opportunities for housing providers. A research assistant and I conducted the hour-long semi-structured interviews via Zoom or telephone (depending on the preference of the interviewee). The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and transcripts were shared with the respondent for verification.

I reviewed each transcript at least three times to ensure that all interviews were equally considered and to identify common themes (Mason, 2018). The interviews were coded using NVivo. Following Creswell (2013), I identified initial codes through the literature review, as well as from the significant current issues identified by respondents in the questionnaires and discussed in greater detail in the interviews. As I reread the transcripts, I identified additional codes, including those that were unexpected, as they arose in three or more transcripts. The resulting coding framework, applied consistently through a further reading of the transcripts, enabled me to identify and analyse areas of commonality and difference among respondents, as well as to articulate themes connecting housing, human and Indigenous rights, and settler-colonial capitalism. These themes – the barriers and strategies to the provision of low-rent housing identified by housing providers – were shared with research participants in a short summary paper for verification, before being written up into this paper.

4. Findings: Barriers and strategies for the realization of human and Indigenous rights through housing

Non-profit housing providers lead the work of providing low-rent housing in Canada. Although few respondents explicitly named capitalism or colonialism, many described impacts these systems have for their work. Likewise, although few respondents described how their work contributes to upholding human and Indigenous rights, all are developing strategies to continue to provide housing. The three key barriers identified through the surveys and interviews are: a changing funding landscape with limited support for non-market housing provision; the growing complexity of tenants’ lives; and insufficient Indigenous-led housing. In response to these barriers, housing providers find ways to stabilize funding; take a values-based approach to housing provision; and work to create Indigenous housing across the housing continuum.

4.1. A changing funding landscape

Of the non-profit housing providers that participated in the research, 22 were founded between 1962 and 1993, two were founded before 1962 and four were founded after 1993. This reflects federal funding programs for non-profit and cooperative housing provision, which operated from 1973 until 1993. Under these programs, funding agreements provided capital and operating subsidies, including unit-based rent subsidies for some or all units to make rents accessible to the lowest-income households. As these agreements have been expiring since the early 2000s, so too have the subsidies and requirements of the funding agreements (Cooper, 2022).

The shift away from long-term stable funding agreements has resulted in reduced government support for non-market housing provision. Once an agreement has expired, housing providers are fully responsible for maintaining the housing. Interviewees pointed out that even when organizations are still receiving subsidies, it’s often not enough to maintain, update and otherwise keep the units habitable and affordable. The funding can be uncertain, as one respondent noted:

Manitoba Housing has been able to provide us with some subsidy, but we’re not sure how long that’s going to continue … I could get a letter tomorrow that’s saying that the subsidy would end, completely.

Given that many housing projects, particularly those established between 1986 and 1993, were set up as 100% deeply subsidized, maintaining very low-rent housing is difficult or impossible without subsidies.

Inadequate funding is complicated by the increasing cost of providing the housing, the need for skilled staff, and limited capacity to innovate or expand. Several respondents commented on the increasing costs of materials and labour over the last few years, and on the challenges of addressing repairs and maintenance with limited incomes from rents. These challenges are magnified for the rural housing providers (particularly in Manitoba and New Brunswick), as contractors are often unwilling to visit sites that are more than an hour’s drive. One respondent said they had units sitting empty because they didn’t have enough money for needed repairs. Others also noted that housing work is challenging, and the wages are not high enough to attract and keep skilled staff. One blamed it on low government funding, while another pointed to the disconnect between incomes and ever-increasing market rents: ‘How do you pay your staff if they got to pay $2,000 a month for rent?’ It is also difficult to find and keep the right staff – staff with needed skills and whose values fit with the organization – particularly when wages are not competitive.

At the same time, despite the funding available for new construction through the National Housing Strategy (NHS), many organizations find that they have limited capacity to innovate or expand because of day-to-day workloads. While only half the housing providers interviewed were aware of NHS programs, even those who were enthusiastic about the NHS identified barriers to building new housing, including a lack of expertise about construction and project management, especially compared with private developers who have dedicated staff and funds. As well, funding often comes with a high workload because of reporting and administrative requirements; one respondent noted that their deeply-subsidized units take up about 95% of their administrative time.

4.1.1. Strategy: Funding solutions

At a basic level, to implement the right to housing, non-profit housing providers need to be able to maintain existing housing units and build more new units. Repairing and updating units, keeping rents low enough for very low-income households and ensuring that those organizations that are interested in expansion have access to the resources and capacity-building supports needed all cost money. The NHS includes some provision for funding for community housing, but the data collected here shows that many respondents are struggling to maintain staff, support tenants, and keep their housing in good shape as a result of the combination of the low rents their tenants can afford and low funding levels.

Interviewees responded to reductions in government funding in two main ways. Some emphasized the social aspects of their housing provision and asked governments for the funding they need to house low-income tenants effectively. In New Brunswick, for example, the provincial government has extended funding agreements, and in Manitoba the province has provided ongoing subsidies to some housing providers, making it possible for them to continue to offer deeply subsidized units.

On the other hand, where extended funding agreements or subsidies are not possible or desired, housing providers find ways to fund low-rent housing without government subsidies. One respondent looked explicitly to market-based solutions:

I explored around the idea of setting up a REIT, Real Estate Investment Trust, or something that’s really on that high level that might be able to attract some really, really high-level investors.

However, most respondents generate revenue by raising some rents to create mixed income housing, so that at least some of their units will continue to house low-income households. Others add fees for services that were previously included in rents, like storage units or parking spots. Three respondents highlighted the instability of external funding and emphasized their priority of becoming self-sufficient so that, as one said, ‘when the taps get turned off, which they will, or priorities change, we’ll be able to just keep doing the work that we want to be doing.’ Others have reduced their need for subsidies by moving away from very low-rent housing entirely. As one noted,

We just don’t have the capacity, financially or human resource, to accommodate the high needs of individuals that we’re all seeing growing exponentially with mental health issues and addictions and so we just don’t pretend to be that housing provider that’s going to be able to address those high needs.

These strategies are pragmatic and point to housing providers’ commitment to addressing housing need, but also emphasize the gap in availability of high-support, deeply subsidized housing provision for the households that need it.

4.2. The growing complexity of tenants’ lives

While the questionnaires anticipated funding as an important issue, respondents identified tenants’ complex lives themselves, with 11 of 28 respondents (39%) naming tenants’ non-housing needs and complex lives as significant concerns. Many described issues arising from tenants’ drug use and mental health issues, as well as difficulties tenants have in accessing other resources (such as income supports, social supports, food banks or health services), which then affect their capacity to maintain a tenancy.

While some respondents offer housing with wraparound supports for people with mental illness or addictions, many providing general housing do not have additional staff or resources for their tenants. These organizations describe a growing concern with evictions, damage to housing, and other issues that increase costs and take up disproportionate amounts of staff time. The interviews highlighted a range of complications that result from these complex lives, including concerns about violence and safety, increasing instability for tenants dealing with rising costs, difficulty getting jobs, unexpected bills, accessibility needs, experiences of homelessness, and the importance of community connections and family relationships. They also highlighted the challenge of providing training on a limited budget to ensure that staff are ready to work with diverse populations.

Increasing costs combined with low incomes also mean that many tenants have trouble paying for basic needs including food, utilities, childcare, and medications. Some respondents have found ways to support tenants, for example by connecting them to local supports or resources, but others lack the capacity to do so. One respondent, when asked if they provide extra supports, said

We don’t. It’s outside our scope. I mean, we do, but not officially. I end up doing quite a few things that are not within my scope, just in advocating for my tenants because the system is hard to navigate … so unofficially, yes.’

This work requires additional skills and time for staff, as they work with tenants to ensure they can keep their housing.

Interviewees noted that cost increases for market housing while wages are not increasing results in demand for low-rent units from a wider swath of the population, because there just isn’t housing at comparable rents available nearby. It also makes it more difficult for tenants to stabilize their housing situation, as there are fewer affordable options elsewhere. One respondent commented:

It used to be a stepping stone where you could go in, pay that 30 percent, and sock some away … When the cheapest home in our area is in the $500,000 mark, it would take most people a lifetime to save a down payment, and then they wouldn’t even be able to afford the mortgage to begin with.

The result is a perfect storm: reduced services and a shrunken social safety net result in increased poverty which, combined with an increasingly expensive – housing market, makes housing less accessible and makes it more difficult to house people.

4.2.1. Strategy: Taking a values-based approach to housing provision

Given the complexity of many tenants’ lives, many housing providers are providing support to tenants beyond property management, and taking a values-based approach to housing. For some respondents, providing additional resources has long been part of their work. For others, this is a new development as they have noticed their tenants experiencing challenges or particular needs; as one said,

Before, it would’ve been more of a just a property management, property owner kind of feel … we’re engaging our tenants a lot more. We’re helping them apply for different things because some of them have a variety of challenges.

One respondent noted that many of their tenants were not aware of available services in the wider community, and even when they were, accessing them could be difficult; they work with a systems navigator who can connect tenants to resources and supports, and will help with paperwork or phone calls as needed.

Some housing providers work hard to keep their tenants housed because they see that there are minimal options for very low-income households in the private rental market. Especially for those serving households on fixed budgets (e.g. seniors or those receiving social assistance), keeping rents stable and low is essential to keep people housed and, as one respondent noted, ‘to make sure that they’ve still got enough money left over at the end of it for food security, medication security, transportation.’ One respondent cancelled an eviction because a tenant with two children could not find an apartment below $1100; another noted that while the federal and provincial governments are encouraging them to move to a mixed-income model, 92% of their tenants pay rents geared to income, and with ‘even 30% [of our units set at] median market rent … we would probably lose about 150 to 200 people to homelessness immediately’ so they continue to advocate for subsidies. Other organizations highlighted how they support existing tenants by providing different types of housing for changing life situations, for example by reserving one-bedroom units for empty-nesters whose children have moved out.

Housing providers also focus on values to frame decision-making within the organization. Three respondents emphasized that the housing they provide is not just safe and clean, but safe, clean and dignified. This includes ‘putting identical appliances in every apartment’ and paying attention to small details like closet doors and window coverings. It also means training staff to ensure that they can appropriately support tenants in trauma-informed ways, ‘whether that’s related to our response to truth and reconciliation from a housing perspective, whether it’s diversity, inclusivity … ’ One respondent highlighted how upholding particular values results in better outcomes for tenants, staff and the Province:

What I love working at a values-based organization is you make values-based decisions and then you figure out the best implementation plan. … As we leaned into equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging work, decolonization work, one of the benefits of that is you become a fairer, better organization to work for. … They [BC Housing] subsidize us, but in some ways, we subsidize them because the rest of our portfolio … ends up offsetting that amount they won’t pay because we’re doing these ‘unnecessary things’ [such as employing tenant support staff].

Using values to frame policy and practice enables organizations to articulate their priorities and address tenants’ needs beyond the immediate concerns of property management and, in the case of this last organization, to advocate for more funding to support values-based housing provision.

4.3. Insufficient Indigenous-led housing

Some Indigenous housing providers provide housing primarily or exclusively for Indigenous households, while others provide housing for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous households. Like other housing providers, respondents from Indigenous organizations described a lack of stable and sufficient funding, challenges with maintenance and capacity to develop more housing, and difficulties in dealing with tenants’ complex lives. Some organizations – especially but not only Indigenous organizations – commented that there are not enough housing services to address Indigenous housing needs, including long-term rental housing and emergency housing supports.

Inadequate funding and tenants’ complex lives are experienced in distinct ways by Indigenous-led housing providers. Indigenous displacement from territories, culture and language, and traumatic experiences in residential schools have resulted in high demand for culturally-safe low-rent housing (Thistle, 2017, National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019). One respondent pointed to the disproportionate number of off-reserve Indigenous households in housing need and experiencing homelessness. They emphasized the need for more Indigenous-specific funding, noting that there are limited supports for Indigenous households and while in a ‘time of need it doesn’t matter, but having that safe space for our people is important.’ Another respondent noted that they don’t have the resources to provide the full range of supports they want to offer:

If we had time and resource to create a position that would deal with the inadequate housing urban Indigenous people face … Reminds me Healing Lodges are needed for our people.

This more holistic approach to housing provision was emphasized by several Indigenous housing providers, explicitly connecting housing with wellbeing and healing from trauma.

4.3.1. Strategy: Indigenous-led housing across the continuum

The strategies used by Indigenous housing providers to address housing need among Indigenous households highlight the importance of culturally-safe housing. In many cases, they approach their work of providing housing differently from non-Indigenous housing providers. For example, one pointed to the importance of housing extended families, noting that ‘Culturally, grandparents live with their families too … They could be the caregivers while the parents went out and worked.’ Another respondent described the importance of the organization’s Indigenous identity for their tenants, saying

it’s who we are, and we have that respect for each other and that we run things differently than most landlords, where we take into account our Aboriginal cultures, whether you’re Métis, Inuit, Status,¹⁵ or not, that we always remember those things.

As well, two Indigenous housing organizations provide a variety of housing types, from supportive housing to deeply subsidized housing to market rentals to homeownership programs. One in New Brunswick provides housing from deeply subsidized rental units all the way to a program for accessing mortgages, and is now building housing for seniors. Another in British Columbia is developing a ‘drug-free and alcohol-free building to support ones that do not want to lead that lifestyle anymore’ as well as for elders at risk of homelessness. By providing housing along the whole continuum, these organizations are creating a ladder of sorts that Indigenous households can move along in all stages of life to address their housing needs.

5. Discussion: Connecting these barriers and strategies to rights

The high number of households currently experiencing homelessness and housing need illustrates the systemic limitations of Canada’s current approach to upholding the right to housing. The barriers identified in this paper – a lack of access to funding, tenants’ increasingly complex lives, and insufficient Indigenous-led housing – show that the seven characteristics of the right to housing and the Indigenous housing rights described in UNDRIP are unevenly and inadequately addressed through Canada’s policies for low-rent housing (see Table 4).

Table 4. Implications of the challenges and strategies emerging from the research.

Barriers	Strategies	Implications for rights
A changing funding landscape	Find ways to stabilize funding	A neoliberal focus on market solutions reduces funding availability and makes it more difficult to provide low-rent units. Housing providers straddle the tension between providing low-rent housing, and increasing rental income to cover costs
Complexity of tenants’ lives	A values-based approach	A neoliberal shift away from public investment in social programs makes it more difficult for tenants to enact their human and Indigenous rights. Compassion and dignity are central values in ensuring that individuals, families and communities can take care of themselves. Rights are indivisible and interdependent, and require holistic intervention.
Insufficient Indigenous-led housing	Create Indigenous housing	Rights to land, language and culture highlight the importance of culturally appropriate housing. Housing providers are finding ways to work towards self-determination for individuals, families and communities.

These barriers highlight how Canada’s neoliberal and colonial context continues to shape access to housing. Canada’s neoliberal shift towards market solutions to housing need is visible in its reduced and realigned funding for non-profit housing providers. Although the National Housing Strategy includes billions of funding dollars and is meant to address the whole housing spectrum, its programs focus primarily on market provision of housing, and have limited resources for low-rent, non-market housing (Beer et al., 2022). Low-income tenants’ housing experiences are shaped by larger systems including a shrinking welfare state, loss of social supports outside the housing unit, and intergenerational impacts of colonial policies, resulting in compound challenges that make finding and maintaining housing difficult. In contradiction to its obligation under international law to uphold the right to housing, Canada’s move away from funding for non-market and low-rent housing makes it more difficult for low-income households and households needing additional support to find and maintain housing.

Housing providers are responding to the changing funding landscape and complexity of tenants’ lives by challenging the for-profit orientation of market-focused housing policy. They are finding new ways to fund low-rent housing, provide supports and resources to tenants with complex lives, and keep tenants housed in an increasingly expensive housing market. Housing providers’ values-based decision-making moves beyond a four-walls-and-a-roof approach by meeting basic cultural expectations for housing, and through the essential indivisibility and interdependence of accessibility, location and cultural adequacy of housing.

The indivisibility of human and Indigenous rights is particularly visible in the work of Indigenous non-profit housing providers, as they emphasize holistic engagement with trauma, intergenerational housing, and an Indigenous-led approach to housing provision. By advocating for and providing Indigenous-led housing, they are fighting the ‘imposed poverty’ of colonialism and working to break the cycle of ‘Indigenous peoples [being] in a never-ending cycle of victimhood, and Canadians in a never-ending cycle of self-congratulatory saviorhood, while we both reinforce the structure of settler colonialism’ (Simpson, 2017, p. 80). Thus, the inadequacy of state-based resources to address housing need among Indigenous households underscores the urgency of addressing Indigenous rights, including collective rights to self-determination and to land, language and culture – a priority that Indigenous housing providers are already working on.

6. Conclusion

This research demonstrates that, despite the 2019 National Housing Strategy Act and the 2021 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, Canada’s neoliberal and colonial context continues to limit its policy response to housing need. It is perhaps somewhat simplistic to conclude that relying on the settler colonial state and neoliberal capitalist market to address housing need is incompatible with the upholding of human and Indigenous rights. However, to truly uphold the right to housing will require planners and policymakers to implement radical changes to address how neoliberal capitalism and colonialism create housing need.

Two key areas of attention for Canadian governments are first, holistic policymaking, and second, substantive engagement with Indigenous rights. A holistic approach to policymaking would reduce commodification and financialization of housing and connect housing policy with other state-funded programs and policies, including mental and physical healthcare, income supports, education and training, and Indigenous-led language and cultural programming. Holistic policies should ensure that housing providers have sufficient funding to maintain housing in good condition and to support tenants in their complex lives (including resources for tenant supports, eviction prevention and flexibility to keep people housed); to address rising costs; to train and pay staff well; and to design, build and maintain culturally appropriate housing for Indigenous households. A substantive engagement with Indigenous rights will require consideration of UNDRIP, treaties, and inherent rights to self-determination and political authority and decision-making about land and socio-economic development. It will also require funding and support for a housing strategy to be developed and implemented for Indigenous people by Indigenous people (a process already begun by Indigenous non-profit housing providers), and the return of land and decision-making power to Indigenous peoples through nation-to-nation relationships.

Addressing these two elements is essential in upholding all human and Indigenous rights as indivisible and interdependent. It will require new ways of conceptualizing housing and housing need, the use of collective and redistributive policies (e.g. taxation and subsidies) to support low-cost housing, and training for planners and policymakers in how to develop policies and programs that uphold human and Indigenous rights. In the long term, it will address the seven characteristics of adequate housing, and build on the foundational importance of housing in the realization of other human rights, including social, health, economic and civil rights, as well as Indigenous rights.

The current variability in non-profit housing providers’ strategies demonstrate the precariousness of relying on non-profit organizations to address housing need without a strong system of government policy and funding support. As a result of this scattered approach, Canada is not upholding its obligation to ensure that everyone’s right to housing is at least minimally met – in fact, it is reducing households’ capacity to access and maintain housing, in contradiction to its obligation to the progressive realization of housing rights. To fully realize the right to housing, therefore, requires consideration of and change to two key systemic factors that shape housing need and access to housing in Canada: colonialism and capitalism.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the research participants for sharing their experiences, and for their ongoing commitment to providing low-rent housing. Thank you to the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and generous feedback throughout the review process. Special thanks to Sahla Mitchell for her excellent assistance with the research process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This paper draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Manitoba Research Grants Program.

Notes

1. National Housing Strategy Act, S.C. 2019, c. 29, s. 313.

2. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, December 16, 1966, Pub. L. No. General Assembly resolution 2200A (XXI) (entered into force January 3, 1976)

3. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, December 21, 1965, Pub. L. No. UN General Assembly resolution 2106 (XX) (entered into force January 4, 1969); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, December 18, 1979, Pub. L. No. General Assembly resolution 34/180 (entered into force September 3, 1981); Convention on the Rights of the Child, November 20, 1989, Pub. L. No. General Assembly resolution 44/25 (entered into force September 2, 1990); Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, December 12, 2006, Pub. L. No. A/RES/61/106 (entered into force May 3, 2008).

4. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007, A/RES/61/295, art. 3.

5. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007, A/RES/61/295, art. 5, 13, 14, 26

6. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007, A/RES/61/295, art. 21, 23

7. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, September 13, 2007, A/RES/61/295, art. 26.

8. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s.7&15, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c.11

9. ‘Indian’ here is a legal term, used to refer to First Nation people.

10. Constitution Act, 1982, s 35, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11.

11. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s.25, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c.11. The Constitution does not define Indigenous rights, however; they do not emerge from Canadian legal frameworks, but from Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination.

12. National Housing Strategy Act, S.C. 2019, c. 29, s. 313, s.4(d)

13. As Joshua Nichols put it, ‘the struggle for Aboriginal rights and title was never merely a domestic matter,’ as Indigenous peoples in Canada have long asserted a nation-to-nation relationship with Canada (Nichols, 2019, italics in original). As such, it may not be possible to fully implement Indigenous rights within the colonial state; in the short term, however, addressing immediate housing need requires attention to these rights as well as to the colonial context.

14. On-reserve housing was not included in the study as it has a completely different regulatory and policy context from off-reserve housing; reserve lands cannot be individually owned as title is held by the Crown.

15. The term ‘status’ refers to First Nation individuals registered as ‘Indians’ according to the Government of Canada’s Indian Act. Métis people and Inuit are not eligible for Indian status, and many First Nation people are not registered, usually because they or their ancestors either lost, or never had, status. For this reason, many Indigenous organizations take a status-blind approach to service provision, and support any individual who identifies as Indigenous, regardless of status.