Coalition calls on Ottawa to invest $6 billion in indigenous housing

A new coalition is asking the federal government to invest $6 billion in its upcoming budget to develop an urban, rural and northern Indigenous housing strategy.

The National Urban Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Coalition, which represents Indigenous housing providers across Canada, said housing supply needed to be increased by 73,000 units.

Investments should focus on an Indigenous-led approach, supporting culturally relevant community resources and health services to end the cycle of housing insecurity.

“Canada has a problem and we have a solution. We need a federal government now to work in partnership on this solution,” Justin Marchand, Coalition board member and chief executive officer of Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, said at a news conference Tuesday.

Marchand said current government programs are not working. He said allowing communities to make their own decisions will lead to long-term success.

The federal government allocated $300 million in its 2022 budget to jointly develop an indigenous housing strategy, but the coalition said that was insufficient. It pointed to a 2022 National Housing Council report that called for at least $6.3 billion to be spent on Indigenous housing between 2022 and 2024.

The coalition said 80 percent of Canada’s Indigenous people live outside Indigenous-ruled areas and many have been excluded from the national housing strategy and federal housing initiatives. Indigenous peoples disproportionately live in overcrowded housing in need of major repairs and are overrepresented in homeless censuses, correctional facilities and as victims of violence.

Margaret Pfoh, Coalition board member and chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Housing Management Association, said a $6 billion investment in Indigenous housing could save $10 billion in health care and other service costs.

“We can continue to spend more and more money on congested hospital emergency rooms, more money on ambulances, more money on incarceration, or we can invest in preventive measures like safe and affordable housing with the support people need,” Marchand said.

Katlia Lafferty is a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, one of the founding members of the coalition and co-chair of the National Indigenous Housing Network. She said some challenges in the north are a lack of shelter and transitional homes for women and children fleeing violence, limited rehabilitation support, high heating bills and problems with existing homes such as mold and poor plumbing.

“We can no longer just build houses. We need to build homes that are winter proof, we need to work to create a way for our communities to get healthy again,” she said.

Lafferty also stressed the importance of indigenous self-determination in addressing the housing crisis.

“It is about time we had the opportunity to show that as a collective group of Indigenous organizations from coast to coast, we can effectively manage the money needed to do this work across the country and solve this problem once and for all .”

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on February 7, 2023.

This story was produced with financial support from Meta and the Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Emily Blake, The Canadian Press

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