The first Federal Housing Advocate, Marie-Josée Houle, released her first annual report on June 20, focusing her concerns about the affordable housing crisis on three areas:
- Financial factors that are buying up affordable apartment buildings and pushing up rents, rapidly depleting the availability of affordable housing;
- Human rights violations when encampments of people experiencing homelessness are cleared and people’s belongings trashed;
- Challenges to security of tenure of tenants
“Housing is a human right—it is more than an aspiration, it is an obligation,” Houle wrote. “Clearly this human right has not yet been realized for many people in Canada today. There are 1.7 million people in Canada living in homes that are inadequate or unaffordable and 235,000 people face homelessness each year.”
Read her report here: https://www.housingchrc.ca/en/housing-is-a-human-right-the-office-of-the-federal-housing-advocates-2021-2022-annual-report-to-the-minister