Housing is a Right

Canada has ratified a number of international human rights documents, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which not only recognize the right to housing, but also create an obligation on Government to take necessary action to realize those rights.

In 2007, The UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing urged the federal government to commit to funding programmes to realize a comprehensive national housing strategy and to co-ordinate actions among the provinces and territories, to meet Canada’s housing rights obligations.  In recent decades, Canadian policymakers have consistently failed to implement policies or allocate adequate funding to meet this country’s housing rights commitments.

Through the 1970s, Canada had a national housing plan that was envied around the world. However, during the 1980s and 1990s, billions of dollars were cut from affordable housing programs and in 1993 all federal spending for construction of new social housing was terminated. By 1996, the federal government had transferred responsibility for most existing federal social housing to the provinces. By the late 1990s, Canada was the only major country in the world without a national housing strategy.

Today, reliable estimates place the number of homeless people in Canada as high as 300,000. Street homelessness is the most visible impact of our country’s lack of an affordable housing strategy, but for every person sleeping outside there are countless others living in derelict hotels, coping with overcrowding, or staying in abusive and dangerous situations because they can’t afford a safe place to live. Aboriginal people and lone-parent families headed by women are particularly impacted.

Canadian courts have been slow to recognize economic rights, including the right to housing.  That is beginning to change. On December 9th, 2009 the BC Court of Appeal upheld a BC Supreme Court decision that recognizes the right to sheltera first step in the direction of an affirmation of the right to housing by a Canadian court.  The Victoria (City) v. Adams case, which arose from a housing protest in a park in Victoria, held that it is unconstitutional to deprive homeless people of shelter when they have no where else to go.

The Adams decision does not create a positive obligation on the state to provide shelter, but it is the first Appeal Court decision to extend section 7 of the Charter (the Right to Life, Liberty and Security of the Person) to protect a right to housing, in the form of tents and temporary shelters for people who have no where else to go.  Homeless people can now erect temporary over-night shelters protect themselves from the elements and sleep on public property free from harassment by police, municipal officials and security guards. See the legal opinion of Joe Arvay, Q.C., for the implications of this ruling for Vancouver sidewalks and parks.