From Vancouver, BC: Housing Unaffordablity From A Human Rights Perspective

Image of Human Rights Museum in Winnipet, Canada
rrp_20130524 photo by Richard Ray is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Canada, with its magnificent Canadian Museum For Human Rights, has yet to enact its UN commitment to include housing among our human rights.

In North America, the bragging rights for “Most Disgustingly Expensive Big City to Live in” are hotly contested. A perennial frontrunner in the competition is Canada’s Vancouver, long a favourite for foreign investors seeking to profit from an overheated housing market.

Tackling Canada’s affordable housing crisis, an overdue and most welcome federal engagement will bring billions of dollars to the table1. Encouraged by the federal initiative, communities and governments are submitting proposals. The feds, in turn, are evaluating and responding to the proposals.

Meanwhile, warnings about the scope and impact of the affordable housing crisis in North America are changing focus. Concern has for a while seemed fragmented, largely limited on one hand to the plight of increasingly cost-burdened low and middle class households, and on the other to the resistance of neighbourhood groups to becoming part of any solution.

Now, more and more, there are warnings about the impact of unaffordability upon the entire community. Try: Too Big To Fail? Or Will Affordable Housing Boomtowns Create Megacity Bust Towns?

Yet another perspective from Vancouver in a very readable and detailed exploration of  housing as a human right.

The study acknowledges and explores the impact of housing as an investment, as well as the role of the construction industry in supporting this activity, which so greatly influences affordability.

The study’s human rights perspective ultimately focuses attention away from winners and losers in the housing market gambling game. Instead it looks toward those with the lowest incomes and greatest need, where failure to find housing leads directly to homelessness.

See more in this publication by THE CANADIAN CENTRE for POLICY ALTERNATIVES: From Housing Market To Human Right: A View From Metro Vancouver

Footnotes

  1. Canada’s National Housing Strategy

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