The Government of Canada’s failure to adequately address housing need and homelessness has manufactured a national human rights crisis for marginalized women and gender-diverse people. It has trapped us in situations of abuse and exploitation, separated us from our children, deepened our poverty, dislocated us from our lands and traditions, and eroded our dignity and self-determination. In some cases it has cost us our lives.
Canadian housing policy continues to prioritize profit over our right to a dignified life, to security, and to substantive equality. We disproportionately bear the consequences of the financialization of housing, but those of us who suffer most are rarely at decision-making tables or understood as rights-holders. Every day we watch the existing affordable housing stock dwindle at a rapidly escalating pace, driven by forces we cannot control, and decision-makers who do not hear our voices.
We see no future for ourselves in the current housing regime.
This Human Rights Claim, developed by the WNHHN Human Rights Task Force, articulates three key violations of the right to housing experienced by marginalized women and gender-diverse people across Canada:
- Violation 1: Failure to provide adequate, accessible, and affordable housing
- Violation 2: Failure to prevent and eliminate homelessness amongst women and gender-diverse people
- Violation 3: Failure to regulate the financialization of housing in alignment with the right to housing