National Housing Council

Co-Creating the Right to Adequate Housing in Canada was a cross-Canada initiative of the National Housing Council (NHC), led by the NHC in collaboration with SHS and SHIFT Collaborative.

Objective

The initiative served as a first step in mobilizing collective action toward the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing in Canada. The Co-Creating the Right to Adequate Housing report offers actionable recommendations for the Government of Canada to take these critical steps.

We believe the time is now to embrace the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing—a critical journey for Canada; and adopt a human-rights-based approach to housing as a robust framework to address homelessness, reduce housing inequality, and foster inclusive and sustainable communities.

Activities

The final report represents the culmination of work over eighteen months, involving over 200 co-design participants across 25 engagement events. Participants included people with lived experience of homelessness and housing precarity, the private development industry, government players, Indigenous community representatives, the community housing sector, and health and support services experts.

The final report resulted in a new framework for understanding the right to adequate housing ecosystem in Canada, a systems analysis of what it will take to create change, four core recommendations for the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, eight concrete solution directions, and a series of core initiatives to pilot and implement in the Canadian context.