Housing

NWAC is committed to ensuring Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people have access to safe, affordable, and culturally appropriate housing.

Goals:

Provide Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Transgender, and Gender-Diverse Peoples with a range of diverse housing options that meet their housing needs.
Support communities in developing own-source funding so Indigenous communities can have autonomy to develop and maintain their own housing.
Ensure all on-reserve housing considers social and environmental factors that impact Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Transgender, and Gender-Diverse Peoples.

Summary

Indigenous communities face many unique challenges in developing, constructing, and maintaining adequate housing supply. As a result, housing insecurity has become a pressing issue impacting Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Transgender, and Gender-Diverse Peoples in other aspects of life, such as health and social conditions.

In Northern communities, a lack of basic infrastructure makes it extremely difficult to construct new homes, which often leads to poorer housing quality in regionally inappropriate locations. Inadvertently, existing homes on-reserves become subject to overcrowding and other challenges that cause homes to deteriorate quickly and need frequent repairs.
The Indian Act provides additional challenges to First Nations communities as it prohibited lending institutions from seizing on-reserve assets in the event of a payment default¹.
This has historically made lending institutions unwilling to lend to First Nations people, making it extremely difficult to obtain the necessary financial resources to build or renovate homes.

In 2020, NWAC produced a report on housing that recognized complex social, historical, economic, and legislative issues that impact Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, Transgender, and Gender-Diverse People’s access to safe, affordable, and culturally appropriate housing.

Related Material

FINAL REPORT ADEQUATE HOUSING NATIVE WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF CANADA | FEBRUARY 29, 2024, FOR INDIGENOUS TWO-SPIRIT, TRANSGENDER, NON-BINARY, AND GENDER-DIVERSE PEOPLE

Indigenous Housing: Policy and Engagement – Final Report to Indigenous Services Canada (March 31, 2020)

CMHC. Canada’s National Housing Strategy: A Place to Call Home. (2017) Canada’s National Housing Strategy (cmhc-schl.gc.ca)

Housing Fact Sheet (June 1, 2020)

A Literature Review: A Highlight of the Pathways (and Barriers) to Stable, Culturally Appropriate Housing Experience by Indigenous 2SLGBTQQIA

First Nation’s Housing Strategy: Indigenous Women, Girls, and LGBTQ2S: Engaging a National Framework for Housing Policy (April 2018)

References & Citations

1. Patrick, C. (2014). Aboriginal Homelessness in Canada: A Literature Review. Toronto, ON: Canadian Homelessness Research Network Press. Retrieved from: https://yorkspace.library.york...

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