Human Rights, Access and Equity: Cera's Recommendations for the Homelessness Action Task Force
Description:
For years, many people in the housing field have suggested that access to housing is really a supply problem and that for that reason, CERA's work on access issues is peripheral at best. The solution to housing problems, it is argued, is to build more housing.
While we do not deny that supply is an important component of a response to housing problems of vulnerable groups, we believe that the prevailing "supply side" response has vastly over-simplified the problem and often been a clumsy and ineffective response to the housing problems of the most disadvantaged. At any rate, it is simply not a viable option, given current policies at the federal and provincial levels, to propose to solve the housing problems of the most disadvantaged by building housing for all of those who are left out by the market. We have to figure out how to ensure that vulnerable groups can get housing within the existing stock of private market and social housing. The most tragic aspect of housing policy in Canada for the last 15 years is that we have largely ignored systemic barriers to accessing existing stock by pretending that discriminatory exclusion can somehow be solved solely by creating supply. (abstract from the document)
Type of Resource:
Report
Publication Date:
1998
Location:
Toronto