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Organization: Service Canada
Publication Date: 2022
The Reaching Home Community Homelessness Report (CHR) is submitted to the federal government annually, starting in 2021, by communities that receive ongoing federal Reaching Home funding for homelessness services and initiatives. The CHR shows communities a year-over-year picture of the state of homelessness and of the system in place to address it in their local area. The format is designed to guide communities to transition to an outcomes-based...
Publisher: Community Housing Canada
Publication Date: 2022
This report shines a new light on the kinds of vulnerable housing situations and experiences that put people at risk of poor well-being outcomes when in a state of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Findings indicate that the focus on reducing housing vulnerability should begin with the well-being experiences of housing, and pay attention not only to the adequacy of the material housing itself, but also to improved security of tenure and the q...
Organization: Wilfrid Laurier University
Publication Date: 2022
This paper builds on a community-enegaged research project with the Region of Waterloo and uses a socio-legal perspective to provide a comparison of encampment protocols among seven municipalities.
Responses were classified to assess the degree of criminalization present and whether policies were consistent with a human rights approach to hosuing and homelessness. The findings suggest that municipalities could better engage with human rights prin...
Publication Date: 2022
Despite the well-established link between homelessness and incarceration, very little qualitative research has focused on the social processes that underlie this connection. This study draws on 19 in-depth interviews with incarcerated men who reported preprison housing instability, supplemented with 5 interviews with formerly-incarcerated men experiencing homelessness, to explore the gendered nature of the relationship between homelessness and in...
Publication Date: 2022
Dr. Falvo has begun to write an open-access interdisciplinary textbook intended to provide an introduction to homelessness for students, service providers, researchers, and advocates. New chapters will be uploaded here, as they become available.
Publication Date: 2022
This podcast episode discusses the unique experiences of youth identifying as part of the LGBTQ2S+ community with stigmatization, discrimination, and homelessness. Host Mya Moniz sits down with Nick Beckett, a youth worker and local homeless youth and LGBTQ2S+ youth advocate. Nick defines the difference between stigmatization and discrimination through the lens of LGBTQ2S+ youth and explains how a youth's identity can uniquely change their life c...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
Our Mandate
The Federal Housing Advocate is an independent, nonpartisan watchdog, empowered to drive meaningful action to address housing need and homelessness in Canada. The Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, housed at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, helps to promote and protect the right to housing in Canada, including the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing. The goal of the Advocate’s work is to drive change on...
Publication Date: 2022
The right to adequate housing is a human right for everyone in Canada. Many people in Canada live in housing that does not meet basic standards, and many do not have a place to live at all.
The Federal Housing Advocate receives submissions from the public on systemic housing issues and unmet housing needs across Canada.
If you have experienced homelessness or had problems with your housing, you can make a submission to the Advocate. Sharing your...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
This series of reports on the financialization of housing in Canada was commissioned by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate. “Financialization of housing” refers to the growing role of financial firms such as private equity, pension funds, and real estate investment trusts (REITs) in the housing market. These firms acquire, operate, and develop housing as an investment strategy, with an aim to maximize returns for shareholders.
The reports...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
This report serves to introduce and summarize the findings from a series of reports commissioned by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate on the financialization of housing. It begins by considering the social value of housing and the emergence of the right to housing in international and Canadian law. It then defines financialization and maps the role of states in favouring financialization in the housing industry, as well as the investment...
Publication Date: 2022
Our Mandate
The Federal Housing Advocate is an independent, nonpartisan watchdog, empowered to drive meaningful action to address housing need and homelessness in Canada. The Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, housed at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, helps to promote and protect the right to housing in Canada, including the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing. The goal of the Advocate’s work is to drive change on...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
The term “financialization” has significant utility in describing the finance-led housing accumulation that has transformed housing ecosystems in urban rental markets in Canada and beyond. Missing from the discourse, however, is a deeper understanding of the anti-Black nature of financialized landlords’ everyday business and management practices in Canada. The objective of this report is to provide research and evidence to better understand how f...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
The international housing landscape is increasingly financialized, and this presents an urgent challenge to the realization of the human right to adequate housing. To better understand this phenomenon, this report traces its political and historical development from the Bretton Woods Accord through the Nixon Shock and into the current central bank-dominated environment. It looks at changes to the international mortgage regulatory framework since...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
The financialization of seniors’ housing refers to the ownership and/or operation of long-term care homes and retirement residences by companies with a mandate to maximize returns for external shareholders. As of 2020, financialized companies owned approximately 33% of seniors’ housing in the country, including 42% of retirement units and 22% of long-term care beds. There is a well-documented pattern of inferior care at for-profit long-term care...
Organization: ACORN Canada, Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
ACORN Canada worked with the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate and researchers to better understand how financialization affects tenants, especially those tenants who are facing disproportionate barriers to housing. This report includes a compilation of ACORN’s existing research focused on tenants’ rights, findings from a national survey conducted by ACORN of more than 600 tenant households, and in-depth conversations with select members and...
Organization: Office of the Federal Housing Advocate
Publication Date: 2022
This report presents an overview of the financialization of rental housing in Canada. After describing the phenomenon of financialization in general terms, it considers the current state of financialization in Canada’s stock of rental housing by analyzing the policies that have catalyzed it. It interrogates the evolving role of financial firms in the Canadian housing market, with a particular focus on the period during and following the COVID-19...
Publication Date: 2022
Studies indicate that youth who experience homelessness are more likely than their peers to have mental health and substance use concerns. This study investigates youth perspectives on ideal services and service provision environments that facilitate help seeking.
Publication Date: 2022
Studies consistently identify how people experiencing homelessness are excluded and displaced. However, the relationship between social and spatial marginalization is not well understood. This article draws from longitudinal research to develop a new framework for understanding forced migration, coerced mobility, and involuntary displacement.
Publication Date: 2022
Temporary housing programs (THPs) aim to serve people that are experiencing homelessness. This article explores the impacts of a THP, the Winter Interim Solution to Homelessness (WISH) in London, Ontario which applied a barrier-free, harm reduction model. While a temporary winter solution provides safer options than living rough, the research team ultimately recommends refocusing responses on permanent housing.
Organization: Human Development Council
Publication Date: 2019