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New report provides recommendations to advance the right to adequate housing

Published on May 30, 2024
photo: North York highrises (iStockphoto)

Canada’s National Housing Council just released the findings from its first ever review panel on a systemic housing issue: the financialization of purpose-built rental housing. Financialization refers to the acquisition of purpose-built rental housing by financial firms and institutional investors, which has been linked to rising rents and evictions.

In fall 2023, over 200 participants, including Maytree, shared their perspectives about financialization to the panel – a new tool established in federal legislation meant to further the right to adequate housing by giving people the opportunity to have their voices heard. Through written and oral hearings, the panel found that:

  • Housing must be treated the same way as healthcare, in that universal access to adequate housing is essential.
  • The use of financialized strategies is having an adverse impact on the right to adequate housing, and is reducing the supply of affordable rental housing.  

Organized around the themes of increasing the right supply and providing support to tenants, the panel’s report concludes by outlining five recommendations for the federal Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities to consider:

  1. Incentivize the development of new affordable rental housing supply, particularly in the non-market sector.
  2. Actively protect existing affordable rental supply through a rental acquisitions program for non-market rental housing providers.
  3. Establish a comprehensive non-market rental housing plan.
  4. Implement housing support for tenants facing housing precarity.
  5. Bring all actors to the table to identify national consensus standards for tenant protections.

The Minister has 120 days to respond to the panel’s report, and this response must be tabled in Parliament 30 days afterwards.

Although the government has started to boost rental supply, it’s clear that more can be done to embed human rights into housing policy in Canada. Maytree calls on the federal government to implement the Council’s recommendations, beginning with the establishment of targets and timelines for increasing non-market rental housing’s share of Canada’s total housing stock, from 3.5 to 6.9 per cent by 2034.