Carney’s Liberals Pledged 500,000 New Homes. Who Are They For?

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal Liberals campaigned on building 500,000 new homes a year — a promise that will require urgency to fulfil. However, that urgency often sidelines equity and those who need housing most: women, youth, Two-Spirit, trans and gender-diverse people.

I’ve experienced this first-hand in my work with the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network, an organization working to end homelessness through policy action, research and advocacy. Our small team has found that even when we’re working collaboratively with elected officials who want to address housing issues, gender and housing are akin to oil and water in terms of combining efforts.

Because our organization connects women and gender to housing, we sometimes feel like a hot potato batted back and forth between ministries responsible for housing and gender equity.

One ministry will say ours is a gender issue, while the other will say it’s a housing issue. But we need our federal ministers to connect the dots between gender and housing, because the work of advancing solutions requires that we work on both, together.

And recently, our work has gotten even more complicated.

During Women’s History Month in March, Prime Minister Mark Carney first took office and left Women and Gender Equality Canada, or WAGE, without a dedicated minister. Whatever the intention for this choice, the message to feminist advocates was clear — women, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people are not a priority investment during tough economic times, even though we know the opposite yields far better results.

Soon he will announce a new cabinet. At the time of this writing, we don't know if Carney will announce a dedicated minister for WAGE.

Inside Canada’s gendered housing crisis

Over 90 per cent of women experiencing homelessness in Canada have survived violence, including domestic, sexual and childhood abuse. Women who are homeless are up to 40 times more likely to die prematurely than housed women.

We also know that 28 per cent of women-led households experience “core housing need,” which means a household is not able to afford its housing, may not have enough space for its needs, is in bad repair and/or can’t afford to move to a better place.

Thirty-six per cent of people experiencing homelessness are women-identified, and 90 per cent of families using emergency shelters are single mothers with children.

Canadians voted to maintain democracy and our institutions in the recent election. They demanded a change from the status quo, loud and clear.

While “Gender Based Analysis +” was a menu title on the Liberals’ platform site, the party’s broad commitments lacked mention of homelessness and housing together with gender. They didn’t recognize the unique, violent and often invisible ways women and gender-diverse people experience housing, homelessness and housing insecurity.

A national review is underway

In 2022, the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network compiled a 65-page body of evidence showing that the right to housing was not being realized for women and gender-diverse people in Canada.

The human rights claim, “The Crisis Ends with Us,” was filed with federal housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle, along with a claim from our sister organization, the National Indigenous Women’s Housing Network.

Houle agreed with our findings, calling Canada’s gendered housing crisis a national human rights crisis.

She referred our claims to the National Housing Council and asked them to strike a review panel on the gendered housing crisis.

The review panel, Neha, a Mohawk word for “our ways,” is currently examining Canada’s duty to uphold the right to housing for women, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people.

After the panel has collected its body of testimony, it will publicly deliver recommendations to the minister in charge of the National Housing Strategy Act. The minister is bound to reply in the House and the Senate within 120 days. This means that after about three months, they are expected to come back with a plan on how to implement these changes.

The Liberals promised to honour human rights on their website, noting that they are “standing up for the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, protecting the values it was founded on — which are under threat — and ensuring the protection of women, people with disabilities, racialized and Indigenous communities, and 2SLGBTQI+ people.”

If they are serious, then the recommendations coming from the Neha review panel should be implemented and championed across the country because the right to housing is under threat.

This Liberal minority government must contend with the global and domestic rise of far-right extremism, which popularizes gender rights as an enemy. This manufactured polarity keeps me up at night for many reasons, including it having very real implications for moving forward on gender-related housing rights in Canada.

If this new government is going to build 500,000 homes a year, there is no room for error. While we currently lack sufficient data to truly address homelessness and housing precarity for women and gender-diverse people, there are answers coming; the Neha panel’s forthcoming recommendations will be rooted in the lived experiences and rights of women and gender-diverse people.

If this new government is committed to housing as a human right — and about protecting the Charter values it claims to uphold — it must act decisively to implement them.

Because building 500,000 homes a year means nothing if the people who need them most are still left outside.