Taking practical action on the human right to housing
Housing is a hot-button issue in cities across Canada, but political leaders can be reluctant to act in the absence of clear public support, particularly when it comes to the sharp end of the problem: affordable housing and homelessness.
Taking a human rights-based approach to housing is a practical way to drive government action and mitigate the perceived political risks of tackling wicked problems. Human rights-based policies can normalize the types of decision-making processes and practices governments need to adopt to make progress on the housing crisis.
To start, a human rights-based approach gives us a clear line of sight on responsibility: governments have the duty to act to protect people and their human right to adequate housing. This includes all levels of government: national, sub-national and municipal. They must initiate and sustain actions according to established human rights principles, with the aim of making sustained progress.
Action 1: Put people first
A human rights-based approach calls for governments to make people the foremost consideration in decision-making, to prioritize the people most in need and for people to be meaningful participants in the decisions that affect them. In the housing crisis, the people who are most in need are those without safe, secure, adequate homes: people who are experiencing homelessness.
In the summer of 2021, the City of Toronto sought to “clear” several encampments from public parks. Not only did this enforcement approach violate the human rights of encampment residents; it did not solve the problem. This enforcement approach failed to answer an important question: Where were the evicted people going to go?
In response to criticism from earlier efforts, the City took a different approach to the people living in an encampment in Dufferin Grove Park in the Summer of 2022. This human rights-based approach was highlighted as a promising model in Toronto Ombudsman Kwame Addo’s otherwise scathing report on the City’s actions on encampments.
In Dufferin Grove Park, the City put the people living in the encampment first. Over a period of months, the City brought mobile, comprehensive health and social services to these residents, built relationships with people, and connected them to safer indoor living spaces, including permanent housing, that met each person’s particular needs.
We can learn important lessons from this approach. For example, relationship-building takes time, as does finding appropriate temporary or permanent housing. It requires a focus on the people most in need and on positive outcomes for people. It also requires respect for the dignity and participation of each person, and ongoing engagement with people experiencing homelessness.
Action 2: Exercise the power to convene: Bring decision-makers together around human rights
Affordable housing, particularly private market rental housing, is another contentious area where local governments might not have vocal public support to act. Formalizing human rights-based actions through regulations and bylaws can help.
In December 2022, the City of Toronto passed a bylaw that legalized rooming houses, also known as multi-tenant houses. As a deeply affordable form of rental housing, rooming houses are an important part of the affordable housing landscape.
Prior to this bylaw, it was illegal to operate a rooming house in many parts of Toronto, though they existed throughout the city. Implemented well, the regulatory framework has the potential to ensure that rooming houses meet minimum habitability and safety standards, are accessible to people with disabilities, and are culturally appropriate. It also sets the stage for residents to claim their rights as tenants.
Maytree had the opportunity to work with the City of Toronto on a human rights review while it developed the regulatory framework. The review analyzed the proposed framework against established dimensions of the human right to adequate housing. The process provided a common goal and set of values to the various parties involved, including the fire, planning, licensing and standards, building, and housing departments. Public servants who participated in the analysis indicated that the process was practical and useful, and was not cumbersome.
Action 3: Ensure independent accountability for housing
Because the rooming housing bylaw was passed so recently, its effects have not yet been measured. But this must follow. The human rights principles of steady progress, accountability, and transparency means that government is required to determine and demonstrate where and how much progress they are making on improving people’s daily lives.
Cities need to establish a body to act as an independent locus of accountability for housing. This office or institution could monitor progress on a city’s strategic plan on housing, conduct systemic reviews, collect data, and make recommendations. It could coordinate and support all departments involved in housing to ensure that they are applying the human right to housing framework to their work. This body should have the ability and capacity to advocate for the human right to housing.
Accountability and progress go hand-in hand. Accountability mechanisms keep governments focused and moving toward the goal of ensuring that every person has adequate housing.
What about building new housing?
Governments can regulate the market so that it operates in a way that protects people’s rights. For example, local governments can regulate what type of housing developers can build and where (through zoning bylaws), the retention of existing housing supply (through protecting affordable housing such as rooming houses) and how landlords operate (through setting and enforcing tenant protection bylaws).
Local governments could go a step further and work with developers to build affordable housing on City-owned land, so that municipalities can retain these assets and ensure that they remain permanently affordable.
A human rights-based approach compels local governments to act
A human rights-based approach gives us clarity: local governments have the duty to respect, protect, and fulfil the human right to housing. It helps us sort out our priorities: we must address the people most in need. Human rights principles are reminders that there is more at stake than efficiency, value for money, and administrative simplicity. It is a practical approach that local governments can use to fuel solutions that focus on ensuring that every person has a home.
This article was first published in “At the Crossroads: Maximizing Possibilities,” a report published by the Canadian Urban Institute during its State of Canada’s Cities Summit on November 30, 2023.