Leilani Farha
Canada’s housing system has a values problem. Unless it is named and fixed, National Housing Strategy 2.0 will spend public money and public time deepening the crisis it claims it wants to solve.
The values embedded in a housing system decide which programs are created and resourced, who is helped and who’s not.
In Canada the housing system was established on a set of values that have meant some people’s housing counts more than other’s, that one’s housing status – tenants and those who are unhoused – is grounds for lesser treatment, and that a home’s worth is measured by what it returns to an investor and to the economy. Those values produced the crisis we are in.
The NHS is not fit for purpose
The National Housing Strategy was launched in 2017, two years before Parliament passed the National Housing Strategy Act. The Strategy purported to adopt a “human rights based approach”, but did not articulate what that meant and it wasn’t clear how that was reflected through its programmes and commitments.
In 2019, the National Housing Strategy Act was adopted, declaring the housing policy of the Government of Canada to recognize that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law, and committing the Government to its progressive realization.
This new legislative commitment, based on a strong set of values and referencing international law and thus the standards required to implement those values, the Government should have undertaken an exhaustive review of the Strategy to ensure it was fit for purpose. It did not. The Government left the National Housing Strategy exactly as it was: the underpinning values and architecture of the strategy were never reartiuclated..
As a result, what we call a national housing “strategy” is really a string of housing programs without guaranteed human rights outcomes. Stop and start funds are provided for discrete problems. And beneath that string of programs are a set of values insufficient to the crisis. It is an outdated market logic: that supply on its own resolves need, that units built and dollars committed are evidence of success, and that the market can be relied on to produce what people require. It proceeds without ever establishing who is in core housing need, where, living in what conditions, under what tenure, at what depth of affordability, and what would have to be built or protected or regulated to address that. Programs are shaped around what the market is willing to build or bear, not around what people actually need. And because the strategy sets no meaningful goals or timelines tied to housing outcomes, it cannot be assessed for its effectiveness or adapted to be made better.
The NHS is not “Strategy”
In a 2018 report on human rights based housing strategies, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (A/HRC/37/53), Leilani Farha, drew a sharp line between a housing policy, a bundle of programs addressing discrete problems, and a housing strategy, which must rest on a vision of structural change and function as a living document rather than a static plan.
A strategy without a transformative vision underneath it is not a strategy. Values are not a preamble to the real work. They are the foundation upon which the operative parts of a strategy spring.
If NHS 2.0 is going to change outcomes for people, it has to do more than bolster existing programs or add new ones. It has to be built on principles capable of producing the right actions and outcomes, principles that treat housing as a right, essential for resilience, well being and existence. A renewed Strategy must find its footing in the National Housing Strategy Act and the obligations on Government that Act creates.
What a values-first approach actually requires
- Human rights and climate commitments must be embedded in and applied to all housing related law and policy. These would not be an add-on chapter, but integrated into all aspects of the Strategy and applied to all policies and programs including how housing providers are taxed, CMHC lending practices, and construction standards alike.
- Housing must be treated as one system, not four silos. Homelessness programs, non-market housing, market rental, and homeownership are causally linked. Every actor who profits from the system bears responsibility for what it fails to deliver.
- A primacy must be placed on non-discrimination, equality and addressing homelessness as immediate obligations. NHS 2.0 must press provincial, territorial, and federal human rights commissions to apply existing human rights protections to people experiencing homelessness and to others facing discrimination on the basis of housing status.
- Rightsholders are the focus not stakeholders. The government’s legitimacy will be built by listening to and learning from people with lived experience of the housing crisis at every stage, from design through implementation to monitoring. Tenants, people living in homelessness, young people shut out of housing, older people struggling to keep their homes. Consulting adjacent advocacy organizations is not a substitute.
- Hold Third-Parties Accountable. The government cannot divest itself of its human rights obligations. Even though 97% of Canada’s housing stock is privately owned, the government remains legally responsible for ensuring that it meets the government’s obligations under the NHSA. This means regularly meeting with the country’s largest developers and residential property owners to ensure they understand the human rights obligations required under the NHSA. And ensuring ALL landlords know what is required of them.These must be articulated in the NHS.
- The Government must establish measurable goals and timelines for human rights outcomes, backed by real and consistent investment. A commitment without a binding deadline is a promise, not a strategy. A housing strategy must set clear goals, timelines, and actually meet them, relying on the accountability infrastructure that already exists to ensure the Government stays on track.
Values determine outcomes
Each of these five requirements is an expression of the same claim. Values determine outcomes. Without naming and replacing the values that produced this crisis, government will not solve it. It will keep doing more of the same, dressed up as something new.
