Right to Housing Challenge

Case Update: What’s Happening Now

Housing is a human right!

Together with community partners, ACTO has organized a Right to Housing Coalition. The Coalition includes people from a variety of backgrounds and expertise, including people with lived experience of homelessness or of being inadequately housed, community organizations, advocacy groups and academics.

What is the case about?

Homelessness in Canada has reached crisis levels. We are one of the few countries in the world without a national housing strategy. Canada’s failure to respond to the homelessness crisis is in violation of its international commitments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, specifically section 7 which guarantees the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and section 15 which guarantees the equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination.

What are we hoping to achieve?

We are asking for more than simply the right to shelter. We will argue that under the Charter, Canadians have a right to adequate, affordable housing. We will ask the court to require the government to develop a national and provincial housing strategy.

We are looking to spark public imagination to think about the issue of housing differently. The legal case will be one part of a broader project of education, organization and mobilization.