Report Calls On Canadians To Rethink Housing Need

By
Rosemary Foulds
-
tents along walkway in park in Toronto
Kensington Market ramble 2023-11-09 - 15 photo by Jmabel is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed
In Canada, people who are homeless are not counted among the people who need housing.

Canada’s Federal Housing Advocate has just issued a report called A Human Rights-Based Calculation Of Canada’s Housing Supply Shortages. The report:

    • directs attention to the number of people who have high housing costs.
    • takes account of the people with high housing costs who are excluded by the standard methods for calculating housing need1.
    • considers how population growth will affect housing need.

Taking all of these factors into account, the report calculates that 9.6 million more homes will be needed by 2031.

The report is written by Carolyn Whitzman, who is based at the University of Ottawa. In it she says that some of the need for housing can be met in the short term by issuing subsidies to people with very low incomes that will make it easier for them to pay for their housing.

Whitzman also states that more housing will need to be built. She specifies that the new housing will need to be permanently affordable to people with very low incomes.

This report is helpful because it uses human rights criteria to estimate need. Human rights criteria are a sensible choice in Canada, where the National Housing Strategy Act was passed in 2019. The National Housing Strategy Act aligns Canada’s housing goals with the UN’s human rights guidance. That guidance also directs that the people in greatest need should be helped first.

Whitzman’s report also draws attention to the Housing Assessment Resource Tool (HART), which provides data about who needs housing at a community level. The data highlight variances in need between specific communities and the whole country.

The report and the HART data are clearly intended for readers in Canada. However, the methodology for estimating housing need based on human rights may be useful in other jurisdictions.

Whitzman’s report is posted at the Homeless Hub: A Human Rights-Based Calculation Of Canada’s Housing Supply Shortages

Footnotes

  1. Canada’s standard measure of housing need is described in Core Housing Need. Here are some of the people with high housing costs and/or unsuitable housing who are not included: people who are homeless, students, agricultural workers, and people who live in long term care homes.