This chapter consolidates the recommendations made in previous chapters.

1) We recommend that a portable shelter subsidy be allocated as a direct cash transfer or tax credit based on established eligibility criteria to all qualified households. This would remove the administration and allocation of subsidy from the housing provider and eliminate the discriminatory consequences of lengthy waiting lists and other restrictions in social housing. Eligibility for subsidy would be determined by need rather than by whether women get access to social housing units.

2) We recommend that the federal government and the provinces develop methods of collecting complete information about the demographic and income characteristics of households securing access to assisted housing and that allocation of assisted housing be revised in order to ensure equitable representation of young women, larger families, newcomers and other groups at risk of homelessness.

3) Funding for new rental housing supply should be made conditional on non-discriminatory rental practices and on ensuring that the stock will remain affordable rental in the future.

1) CMHC’s restrictions on mortgage insurance should be removed and regulation of banks should ensure that women and low income households are provided with alternative ways of demonstrating credit worthiness.

2) Banks should be required to provide detailed information about the income and household characteristics of those provided with mortgages, and be required to develop special programs to provide mortgages to low income households

3) Programs should be initiated to provide protection to low income home buyers from interest rate fluctuations.

4) While programs designed to assist homeowners with repairs would be valuable programs for low income women homeowners, these programs need to be linked with major initiatives to provide access to home ownership for single mothers and low income women.

5) Tax expenditures such as the capital gains tax exemption for primary residence available to home owners should be matched by a shelter allowance for low income renters so that federal program and tax expenditures are fairer to women.

1) The Homelessness Secretariat should consider setting as a priority the funding of community based initiatives that address the systemic causes and diversity of women’s experiences of homelessness.

2) The Homelessness Secretariat could facilitate the establishment of a vehicle, such as a national network, to facilitate communication and collaboration between women’s groups across Canada on issues related to women’s housing and homelessness. A national network would assist in linking local community activism to systemic issues that are often national or international in scope. It might also assist in ensuring issues related to women’s housing and homelessness are securely placed on political, economic and social policy agendas.

1) The right to adequate housing should be recognized by the federal government as an Aboriginal treaty right, arising from the Federal government’s fiduciary responsibility with respect to Aboriginal peoples. To this end, the federal government has an obligation to clarify with treaty nations a modern understanding of existing treaty terms as they apply to housing. Governments also have an obligation to ensure that Aboriginal women, men and children have adequate shelter, and short and long term means to provide for their own housing needs.

2) If the Indian Act is to remain, it must be amended to remove all discrimination against Aboriginal women and their children. This must be done in consultation with Aboriginal women and representative organizations.

3) There is a real need for more research which specifically investigates and documents Aboriginal women’s housing and living conditions and which develops Aboriginal women-specific recommendations. Federal and provincial/territorial governments as well as band councils responsible for Aboriginal housing and funders must provide the necessary resources to Aboriginal women’s organizations to undertake such research.

4) Across the country mainstream organizations and networks are undertaking a variety of activities to demand federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments to address the housing crisis across Canada. These mainstream organizations and networks must work harder to ensure that Aboriginal women’s groups are informed of and included in these activities and sought as partners for collaborative activities.

5) Aboriginal women have used the Charter in a limited way to enforce their equality rights. This avenue of recourse could be pursued further as a means of improving their housing and living conditions and the discrimination they suffer both on and off reserve. To the extent that they are not already doing so, Aboriginal women should pursue international human rights enforcement mechanisms such as the complaints procedures available under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to address their experiences of discrimination with respect to property rights upon marriage dissolution and other experiences of discrimination.

6) Federal and provincial/territorial governments as well as band councils responsible for housing must respond to the specific housing and income issues experienced by Aboriginal women living on and off reserves. This would include: earmarking funds for the construction of new units specifically for Aboriginal women on and off-reserve that are culturally appropriate and that accommodate families of different sizes; ensuring that all Aboriginal women have sufficient funds (perhaps through a portable shelter allowance financed by the Federal government) to access existing and new housing stock on and off reserve; and allocating existing housing stock in a non-discriminatory fashion, prioritizing those in need.

7) The recommendations for future action articulated in Pauktuutit’s report, Inuit Women: The Housing Crisis and Violence must be implemented immediately. These recommendations include:

• The reinstatement of secure, adequate and long-term federal funding for housing;

• An Inuit-specific housing policy ensuring an adequate standard of housing;

• The inclusion of Inuit women’s organizations as active partners at all levels of the policy making process, including local housing associations;

• Victims of family violence must consistently be given priority access to public housing.

1) The loss of legally enforceable standards in social assistance allowed unprecedented erosion of income adequacy for women in Canada – particularly for single mothers, women with disabilities, Aboriginal women and racialized women. These changes have been condemned by two United Nations Committees as violations of international human rights law because of their discriminatory consequences for women’s access to adequate housing.

Despite the dramatic rise in homelessness among women and the strongly worded concerns of United Nations Committees, nothing has been done to reinstate enforceable standards with respect to social assistance. During the review of the Social Union Framework Agreement women should press the federal and provincial governments to include an enforceable right to adequate financial assistance in a renewed agreement.

2) Women have turned to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to human rights legislation as alternative sources for enforcement of the right to an adequate standard of living. A critical case was heard on this issue by the Supreme Court of Canada on October, 29, 2001. This type of litigation must continue to be initiated.

Support for including the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing, in a revised Canadian Human Rights Act, was virtually unanimous among women’s and other equality seeking groups across Canada when the Canadian Human Rights Review Task Force held consultations on the Canadian Human Rights Act in 2000. Though this recommendation was not included in the Task Force report, women’s groups could lobby the federal government directly on this issue.

An obvious solution to the discriminatory aspect of the NCBS is to eliminate the clawback in all provinces and territories where it is currently clawed back. In fact, campaigns to this effect have been launched at various times across the country, for example, the Ontario New Democratic Party currently has such a campaign. In October 2001, the NDP Community and Social Services Critic, Tony Martin, brought a petition with over 7,000 signatures to the legislature demanding the Ontario government stop clawing back the Supplement.

There are, of course, potential difficulties with such a solution as it may jeopardize the availability of funds to address the problems facing some women transitioning from social assistance to paid employment. However, rather than reinforcing the division between "being in receipt of social assistance" and "working" and excluding social assistance recipients from the benefit of a much needed child poverty initiative, new benefit programs must be designed to address the complex inter-connections of various programs and benefits to ensure the availability for working women of a shelter allowance or housing subsidy adjusted to family size and housing costs.

To complement these types of strategies, CERA recommends the initiation of Charter litigation challenging the claw back as violating the right to life, liberty and security of the person and to equality rights for single mothers in receipt of social assistance.

1) Employment Insurance requires a thorough overhaul to ensure that women who are vulnerable to unexpected job loss or income reduction are adequately protected so they can continue to pay their rent or make their mortgage payments. This means:

• Rather than disqualifying young women and women who are re-entering the workforce after having stayed at home caring for children, eligibility criteria should be developed that consider and accommodate women’s participation in the paid and unpaid labour force, with particular attention focused on women’s work patterns, young women and women re-entering the labour force after an absence;

• Ensuring eligibility for the family supplement is based on current income and housing security needs rather than on income in the last taxation year and receipt of the National Child Benefit;

• Adjusting regular benefit levels and the family supplement so as to provide the necessary protection to those who, as primary caregivers, have little flexibility to absorb a reduction of income. Benefit and supplement rates would have to take into consideration actual housing costs of EI recipients.

2) Further surveys of women dealing with eviction should be undertaken to document the extent to which improved employment insurance could prevent homelessness.

3) A more efficient delivery system is required so that low income women receive their first EI cheques immediately upon application rather than having to wait between four and six weeks, or alternatively a fast track system could be developed for those in need of immediate income to meet housing costs.