HUMA Brief
June 2024
HUMA (The House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities) is conducting a study on the role played by lack of federal investments in purpose-built rental, affordable, social, rent-geared-to-income, and co-op housing in creating the housing and homelessness crisis, and tent cities in Canada.
HUMA Brief
The Social Housing and Human Rights coalition’s HUMA brief discusses decommodification to secure the right to housing, defining social housing in relation to affordable housing, a brief history of social housing in Canada, and our concrete recommendations for expanding the social housing supply.
The brief concludes that there has been a severe lack of federal investment in social housing – that is public, non-profit, and co-op owned housing for low-income renters where rents are set at less than 30% of household income, or social assistance housing allowances, in perpetuity – starting in the early 1990s through to today. This lack of investment has resulted in the growing housing affordability crisis experienced by low-income renters and people experiencing homelessness across Canada. Experts, advocates, and people with lived experience around housing insecurity and homelessness from across the country agree that the federal government, in collaboration with governments across the country, must prioritize the expansion and maintenance of social housing in order to address this crisis.