Canada’s National Housing Strategy is failing Indigenous women and children

People experiencing homelessness face multiple, complex personal and structural barriers to finding stable housing. That burden, however, is not distributed evenly. Indigenous women and girls are vastly over-represented among Canada’s homeless and precariously unhoused, and they experience some of the most troubling human rights violations. With the National Housing Strategy (NHS)‘s first 10-year term about to expire, this is a pointed moment to take stock of this disparity. It’s time to ask whether the strategy has delivered on its central promise of housing as a human right. Results from a research project colleagues and I led in Calgary identified several issues for Indigenous women seeking affordable housing. In addition to limited housing stock at affordable rent and being turned away when property owners realized they were Indigenous, women reported a climate of harassment and fear. They worried for their own safety and their children’s due to other tenants and even landlords. Examples included being evicted for smudging, landlords entering units whenever they chose and the need for extra security measures to protect their families from threats or fear of violence. The NHS has the goal to ensure that “everyone in Canada has access to housing that meets their needs.” Our research suggests that promise is not being kept; not for Indigenous women, and not for their children. What NHS promised The NHS launched in 2017, backed by a financial investment of more than $115 billion and a promise to create or repair more than 500,000 housing units. It is grounded in a human rights framework, and promises to reduce the number of people in chronic homelessness by 50 per cent. The human rights framework of the NHS includes claims that housing investments must prioritize those most in need, including women and children fleeing family violence, seniors, Indigenous Peoples and people with disabilities. It also requires that housing policy should be grounded in the principles of inclusion, participation, accountability and non-discrimination. According to progress reports, several targets have been met or exceeded. But set against that is a harder number: as of December 2025, chronic homelessness has risen by 34 per cent. Nowhere is the gap between promise and delivery starker than in the Indigenous Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative. As the government’s own progress reporting acknowledges: “Many Indigenous communities and partners do not have the resources or experience to develop a proposal and build within the program timeline given post-pandemic constraints. As a result, it is not likely that the project target of 88 shelters and transitional projects will be met.” Critics of the NHS go further, arguing that the majority of investment isn’t reaching the people it claims to prioritize at all. Instead, they say, it’s supporting home ownership and market rentals by offering developers low-interest loans to build units labelled “affordable” that, in practice, aren’t. Issues with the NHS Some of these failures may trace back to limitations inherent in a human rights framework more broadly. For example, a human rights framework is designed to be universal, meant to guarantee equal access and rights for all. This approach negates the diversity of people’s lived experiences, particularly the deeply rooted systemic issues and the enduring, highly traumatic impacts of colonization. On treating everyone the same, human rights frameworks oversimplify complex social realities. They promote generalized solutions that don’t reach the underlying challenges many Indigenous women and children continue to face — disproportionate exploitation, violence, racism and other forms of systemic inequity. In addition, human rights frameworks are often discriminatory in that they are developed by people with certain privileges. Those same people are gatekeepers for the reporting on progress. That dynamic shows up in the NHS’s own language. Consider the claim that shelter units and housing targets for Indigenous communities can’t be met because “many Indigenous communities and partners do not have the resources or experience to develop a proposal and build within the program timeline.” This framing — placing blame on the communities rather than the westernized metrics and expectations for “success” inherent in the strategy — could be seen as discriminatory. There is a reliance then on non-Indigenous housing providers to deliver on Indigenous housing needs, which is not always successful. And when units are not allocated to Indigenous people, they aren’t really Indigenous units at all, regardless of what they’re counted as. Is affordability improving? Are particularly vulnerable subgroups gaining access to affordable housing? Are those experiences safe and sustainable? (Unsplash) Strengths of the NHS Despite these issues, there are strengths within the NHS. It’s backed by federal legislation through the National Housing Strategy Act, which mandates the maintenance of a national housing strategy. A national housing council advises the ministry on progress, and a housing advocate, supported by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), consults with vulnerable groups and communities to review systemic housing issues. In May 2023, the Federal Housing Advocate and the CHRC requested a review into the failure to eliminate homelessness among Indigenous women, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people. The panel concluded that Canada is not fulfilling the necessary conditions to realize the right to housing in an inclusive, gender-responsive and human rights-based manner. The recommendations are well aligned with our research, including moving away from indicators and metrics like the amount of funding committed and the number of new and repaired units, towards gendered and Indigenous targets for safe housing. They also suggest enhanced efforts for tenant protections against discrimination, exploitation and other HR violations. What is the path forward? While reporting on the NHS is consistent and transparent, a rights-based approach to housing policy would mean reporting on entirely different measures. Is affordability improving? Are particularly vulnerable subgroups gaining access to affordable housing? Are those experiences safe and sustainable? Indigenous women and children need the right to housing, but that right has to mean more than access. It means housing free from racism, threats and violence. The goals of the current NHS are very far away from the realities of Indigenous women’s lives and what they require in terms of rights protections. We suggest what’s needed is a robust accounting of achievements of the NHS including forecasted impact of the strategy — not just outputs — with priority given to its core promise: housing people experiencing homelessness, and Indigenous women and children most of all. Katelyn Lucas, the executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Calgary, co-authored this piece.