Family Homelessness and Canada’s National Housing Strategy: An Uncomfortable Coexistence

Abstract

This dissertation explores the political contexts of women’s homelessness and housing insecurity in Canada. The primary goal of this dissertation is to explain why women’s homelessness has been a persistent problem since at least the 1980s in Canada and why there is still no policy solution to prevent women’s homelessness despite significant research and advocacy on the ground. It argues that the root of this problem extends beyond any single policy choice. Instead, the root of this problem is found in governing logics that favour individualized, market-based solutions to systemic issues. Multiple data sources guide the line of argumentation carried across the chapters of this dissertation. This dissertation utilizes CMHC archived reports, federal budgets, federal Hansard excerpts, news articles from major dailies, 21 interviews with staff from women’s shelters and other advocates in the homeless serving sector, and two Freedom of Information Requests made at the federal level. Weaving these data points together, this dissertation provides a fulsome account of how we arrived at this point in history, in which the problem of women’s homelessness is misaligned with current policy approaches. This dissertation asks two questions. Namely: How does women’s homelessness fit into the National Housing Strategy? And how are women’s housing and homelessness service providers and advocates working within the National Housing Strategy? The chapters variously illustrate how family homelessness fits uncomfortably into the National Housing Strategy, what advocates are doing to combat this uncomfortable fit, and what work remains to move us toward a reality in which women-led households have a right to adequate housing.