WOMEN
AND HOUSING IN CANADA:
WOMEN’S HOUSING PROGRAM
WOMEN AND HOUSING IN CANADA:
This report was researched and written by: Maureen Callaghan, Leilani Farha, and Bruce Porter with the assistance of John Fraser, Niamh Harraher, Michelle Mulgrave, and Sherrie Tingley.
CERA would like to thank the many individuals and organizations who supported this project, provided feedback on initial drafts of the report and attended the Consultation in Ottawa. CERA would also like to thank Michelle Briand and Martin Dufresne for their excellent translation of the draft and final research report into french.
CERA would like to thank Status of Women Canada and the Department of Justice for their support for this project.
Copyright Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, Toronto, 2002.
Introduction Page 1
Chapter 1: Re-Defining and Re-Thinking Homelessness Page 6
Chapter 2: Federal Housing Programs Page
16
A. Rental Housing Page
16
B. Homeownership Page
27
C. Homelessness Secretariat Page
31
Chapter 3: Aboriginal Women and Housing Page 33
Chapter 4: Income Support Programs Page
46
A. Income Assistance – CAP and Beyond Page 47
B. NCB Supplement Page 54
C. Employment Insurance Page
61
Chapter 5: Recommendations Page 68
Twenty-five
years ago, any discussion of the “homeless” in Canada referred to a relatively
small number of transient single men living in “flop houses” in Toronto,
Montreal or Vancouver.[1] Today,
widespread homelessness in Canada is recognized as a “national disaster” that
is both rural and urban and which most dramatically affects women and children.[2]
Women’s experiences of homelessness, however, still
tend to be ignored. Homelessness is
often equated exclusively with those seen on city streets, predominantly men. Although recent data suggests that in cities
like Toronto, as many as one in four people living on the street may be women,
street homelessness is not representative of most women’s experiences.[3] For women with children, living on the street
is an impossible option that is almost certain to mean losing their
children. For single women, increased
vulnerability to violence and sexual assault make street life something to be
avoided at all costs.[4] Existing shelter
surveys indicate dramatic increases in the use of shelters by both single women
and women with children, particularly Aboriginal women and black women.[5] But living in a shelter is also
considered a last resort and the increasing number of women in shelters is certainly only a small fraction of the
number of women across Canada experiencing housing crises and homelessness in
diverse ways –
living with the threat of
violence because there are no other housing options; living in unsafe or
unhealthy accommodation; sacrificing other necessities such as food, clothing
and medical needs to pay rent or to make mortgage payments; moving into overcrowded accommodation with family or
friends; or losing custody of their children because of inadequate housing.[6] Most of these
individualized “housing crises” do not show up in homelessness counts or media
portrayals of homelessness, but they increasingly define the lives of lower
income women in Canada.
There has been too little analysis of homelessness as
a women’s issue or consideration of various programs and responses to
homelessness from the standpoint of the particular barriers facing women in
meeting their housing needs. The goal of
this research project is to consider homelessness from this neglected
perspective, to facilitate collaboration among women in order to address some
of the important omissions and failures of current federal programs and to
fashion appropriate strategies through which the federal government could
respond to the growing crisis of women’s homelessness in Canada.
During
an era characterized by the withdrawal of the federal government from the
housing field, and given that provinces hold ultimate constitutional
responsibility for most housing in Canada, a focus on federal policies and
programs may seem anachronistic.
However, most of those with whom we have consulted agree that it is
important to recognize the unique responsibilities of the federal government
and the role that it plays in the various policy areas that have a direct
effect on women’s homelessness.
Although special arrangements would need to be made with respect to Quebec, local control and administration of housing and income programs does not remove the need for national co-ordination and leadership. As is noted in s. 36 of the Canadian Constitution, the federal government and the provinces are jointly committed to ensuring public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians. It is the federal government which is responsible for reporting on Canada’s compliance with international human rights law guaranteeing the right to adequate housing and for ensuring that all levels of government respond to the strongly worded “concerns” from a number of U.N. human rights treaty monitoring bodies about growing homelessness as a violation of fundamental human rights in Canada. The federal government has constitutional responsibility for First Nations’ Aboriginal housing and thus for addressing what is widely recognized, both in Canada and internationally, as “the most pressing human rights issue facing Canadians.”[7] Under the Social Union Framework Agreement, the federal government is jointly committed with the provinces to “meeting the needs of Canadians” including ensuring access “to essential social programs” and providing “appropriate assistance to those in need.”[8]
The
National Housing Act (NHA) mandates a diverse and significant role for
the federal government with respect to “the improvement of housing and living
conditions.”[9] While the
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has divested itself of direct
responsibility for many social housing programs, it continues to be a partner
with provinces in social housing agreements, provides about two billion dollars
of subsidy for social housing in a wide range of social housing and rent
supplement programs, and has direct responsibility for overseeing federally
funded co-operative housing.
As
will be seen in the review of federal programs in assisted housing, the federal
government historically took the lead role in developing affordable rental
housing programs. When the federal
government withdrew from funding new social housing programs in recent years,
provinces followed suit with cuts in expenditure that were even more dramatic
than those initiated by the federal government.[10] Recent
attempts at reversing this trend have been spearheaded by the federal
government and it is important that these new initiatives be considered from
the standpoint of women’s homelessness.
The
federal government also plays the lead role with respect to programs and
policies related to access to homeownership and assistance for homeowners. While it is true that many low income women
are unable to consider the option of homeownership, a considerable proportion
of single mothers and other women continue to rely on this option, and many
more might benefit from it if discriminatory barriers were removed. Chapter Two of the study focuses on federal
government programs specifically related to housing, looking particularly at:
A. The federal government role in assisted rental housing; B. Home Ownership
and C. Federal Homelessness Initiatives from the standpoint of women’s housing
and homelessness.
Aboriginal
housing remains a critical component of federal responsibilities toward
Aboriginal people. With living
conditions on-reserve having been described as “intolerable” by the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and with Aboriginal women and children
dramatically over-represented among the homeless in urban centers like
Vancouver, this area of federal responsibility, reviewed in Chapter Three, is
critical with respect to women’s homelessness.[11]
In addition to the federal role in housing programs,
it is also important to consider the impact of income policies and programs in
which the federal government plays a key role. The protection of income
security resulting from unemployment, long term disability and pregnancy and
parenting of infants, a federal responsibility under the federal Employment
Insurance Program, is critical to security of tenure for women and to ensuring
that women have an income with which to pay for housing during times of
increased risk of homelessness. Also,
federal cost-sharing agreements for social assistance programs have always been
an integral component of the protection of income security, critical to meeting
women’s housing needs, particularly those of single mothers, women with
disabilities, newcomers and young women.
Adequate financial assistance for costs of housing was a requirement of
such programs under the Canada Assistance Plan Act, and subsequent changes in
federal/provincial agreements in this area have had a dramatic impact on
women’s homelessness. In addition, a new reliance in federal provincial
agreements on the income tax system as a vehicle for providing financial
assistance and funding programs for families living in poverty through the
National Child Benefit, establishes a direct link between federal taxation
policies and the ability of women with children to meet their housing
needs. Chapter Four considers these
three critical aspects of federal income policy as they impact on women’s
homelessness: A. Income Assistance and the repeal of the Canada Assistance
Plan; B. The National Child Benefit; and C. Employment Insurance
Prior to commencing our analysis of federal programs
and policies in light of women’s homelessness, however, it is important to
consider in more general terms how we ought to conceive of homelessness from
women’s perspectives. The first chapter,
Re-thinking Homelessness, considers ways in which traditional definitions and
approaches to homelessness have failed to include or address women’s diverse
experiences. We consider some of the
inter-connections between housing programs, subsidy eligibility and allocation,
income security, access to credit, security of tenure, transportation and
service needs which are often neglected but which are central to women’s
experiences of homelessness. We also consider, in this section, some of the
distinctive issues facing rural women, Aboriginal women, young women, immigrant
women, single mothers, women with disabilities and racialized women that have
been ignored in prevailing conceptions and approaches to homelessness, and
which need to be part of the framework within which we consider federal
programs and their impacts on women’s homelessness.
The
Inadequacy of Traditional Definitions of Homelessness for Women
Because
women’s housing crises do not commonly manifest in street homelessness, an
inclusive analysis of homelessness cannot adopt as its definition of
homelessness “sleeping rough on the streets” as some analysts have defined it.[12] At the same
time, a frequently used alternative definition based on “affordability
criteria”, which would categorize a household paying more than 50% of income
towards rent as being “at risk of homelessness,” is also problematic.[13]
The
fact that an increasing number of women are now living on the street is
certainly an important indicator of a growing problem, but it would be
inappropriate to analyze the nature of the problem of women’s homeless in terms
of street homelessness. Similarly, it is
certainly the case that paying a high percentage of income toward rent is frequently
associated with hardship and may often force women to live without adequate
food and other necessities in order to pay rent. On the other hand, “rent to income ratios” or
generalized “affordability” criteria have often been associated with the assumption
that those who must pay high proportions of income toward rent or mortgage
costs are more likely to default and face eviction or lose their homes. Since women are more likely to be caring for
children and to be paying high percentages of income toward rent, such an
assumption has obvious discriminatory implications for women.
Landlords
across Canada deny thousands of women access to the most affordable apartments
they can find on the basis of arbitrary minimum income criteria or “rent to
income” ratios which disqualify the majority of women. Banks and credit companies similarly
disqualify most women from mortgages on the basis of similar requirements of
minimum incomes in relation to mortgage costs, without any consideration of
whether they may have been paying higher monthly payments in rent without
default.[14] Human rights
tribunals and courts have ruled that there is no evidence to substantiate the
use of rent to income ratios as indicators of risk of default on rent and found
the use of minimum income criteria discriminatory when used by landlords to
disqualify single women, and single mothers, social assistance recipients,
Black women, newcomers and other equality seeking groups seeking rental
apartments.[15] Similarly, the refusal of a mortgage to a single
mother on social assistance on the basis of similar reasoning was found by a
Quebec tribunal to constitute discrimination on the basis of social condition.[16] Comparative
data on the percentage of income paid toward rent or mortgage payments is
certainly useful in considering the unique vulnerability of women and is
clearly indicative of a risk of homelessness in the sense of having to forego
other necessities to pay the rent or perhaps to move out of appropriate housing
to avoid default. As an indicator of
risk of “homelessness”, however, such data needs to be considered in
conjunction with many other factors and clearly distinguished from
discriminatory assumptions and policies used to deny women access to housing
and credit.
Other
definitions of homelessness are derived from a broader concept of housing
adequacy, such as the definition suggested by the United Nations Year of
Shelter for the Homeless:
Those who have no home and who live either outdoors or in emergency shelters or hostels, and people whose homes do not meet UN basic standards of adequate protection from the elements, access to safe water and sanitation, affordable prices, secure tenure and personal safety, and accessibility to employment, education and health care.
However,
it is unclear whether this definition would include within its ambit a woman
who is sleeping with her children on the floor of a friend’s apartment or
whether “affordable prices” would include the requirement, in the Canadian
context, of timely access to adequate income assistance necessary to pay the
rent in the event of job loss or other change of circumstance. A focus on housing “adequacy” may divert
attention from other critical determinants of homelessness for women. It is particularly important, in our view, to
recognize that homelessness relates to more than simply housing and that a
review of the causes of homelessness needs to consider a much wider range of
government programs and policies than housing programs per se.
Women’s housing crises leading to homelessness often result from short-term changes and transitions which are not captured by general affordability or adequacy measures and are often overlooked in programmatic responses to homelessness.
Women
are more likely to be in non-permanent employment and are more vulnerable to
lay-offs and changes in income than men. Women assume disproportionate
responsibility for dealing with needs which may suddenly arise from illness and
disability within the immediate or extended family. Women experience dramatic income loss after
separation (an average 23% decrease in income while men experience a 10%
increase).[17] On divorce,
women who are sole support mothers have an average 33% decrease in household
income. Pregnancy and care of young
children often results in interruptions in earnings. Domestic violence and sexual assault may
suddenly create housing needs that were not anticipated a few months earlier,
and may suddenly render emergency housing options or shared accommodation
untenable.
These
types of unique challenges in women’s lives in relation to income stability,
daycare, transportation, dependents with disabilities, personal security and
the needs of children define the complex interdependencies behind women’s
homelessness. Proposed solutions need to
be contoured to these realities. Increased supply of subsidized housing, for
example, will not address the needs of women in these types of situations if
the allocation system restricts access to subsidy to those who applied a number
of years previously. Similarly, child
tax credits or employment insurance supplementary benefits linked to a previous
year’s annual income are unlikely to meet these kinds of transitional
crises.
The homelessness crisis facing women is also a poverty crisis and cannot be understood merely in relation to scarcity of appropriate housing. Based on consideration of housing supply alone, one might imagine, for example, that women’s homelessness would have been worse in the mid and late 1980’s when cities like Toronto had vacancy rates as low as 0.1%, and that homelessness would have abated through the 1990’s with higher vacancy rates. In fact, the opposite has occurred.[18] In Toronto, shelter use has increased from approximately 1,000 in the mid 1980s to almost 5,000 by the end of 1990s and among shelter users the proportion of women has risen dramatically.[19]