Housing as a human right for people with disabilities
Access to adequate housing is a human right. It means more than just having a place to live. It means being able to live in dignity. For people with disabilities, it also means getting to choose where to live. It means having a home that is accessible. It means having supports to live independently.
But the reality is that people with disabilities continue to face many barriers to housing. This needs to change.
We are working with the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate. Together, we are monitoring the right to housing for people with disabilities in Canada. We want to know how Canada is doing in this area. What are the housing situations of people with disabilities? What types of barriers do people face? What could help make things better?
Learning from people with disabilities
In 2022, we met with people with disabilities, their families, and caregivers. We asked them about their housing situations. They told us about barriers they face.
The report, What we learned: Housing for people with disabilities, describes what people told us about their housing situations.
It includes ideas on how to improve housing for people with disabilities. These ideas for solutions are summarized into Calls to action.
Monitoring framework
We created a system to monitor the right to housing for people with disabilities. It is called our Monitoring Framework. We created it with people with disabilities and experts.
Our framework looks at the housing situations of people with disabilities. It lists the information we will collect and study. The framework helps to know what information should be monitored in eleven key areas. For example, we are collecting information about people with disabilities who live in institutions. We are also looking at the accessibility of housing.
This information will show where Canada needs to improve. We will use this information to advocate for change. We will share our results to help monitor whether governments in Canada are making progress on their human rights obligations.
Results
The early results show that people with disabilities face many barriers to housing. They did worse in every area of inadequate housing and homelessness than people without disabilities.
- People with disabilities were four times more likely to experience homelessness, and more likely to become homeless due to violence.
- They are more likely to live in unaffordable housing.
- They are almost two times more likely to live in core housing need.
- Many people don’t have the physical aids they need in their homes.
- A lot of information is missing about the housing situations of people with disabilities. This makes it hard to track progress over time or know what barriers exist.
These results are a starting point. More work is needed to address these issues.