Michael Wesley knows how hard it is to find a place to live.
For four years, he often lived in a tent in the bush, saying he felt safer there than being on the streets in Timmins and Kirkland Lake, Ont.
“It’s hard living out there,” the Cree man from Moosonee, Ont., said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from a transitional home in Toronto on March 18. While he was homeless up north, he said, he survived on scant meals and nearly died from drug overdoses. He said he lost contact with his whole family and children during that period. “I used a lot of drugs just to hide my pain and hide all the loss that happened in my life. And it didn’t help. It made things worse.”
He says he longed to turn his life around and find housing, but there were few options and resources to help the homeless in northern Ontario. He decided to move to Toronto about a year ago, escaping the rampant drug use around him.
He said when he arrived in the city, he was relieved there were more resources for food and shelter than were available in northern Ontario. Still, shelters were crowded. He said he was on a wait list for a few weeks before a spot opened up for him.
Eventually he found transitional housing with the help of a non-profit housing provider and got help for his drug addiction. He says he hopes to find his own place, which he plans to pay for using social assistance until he finds a job, but the hunt for subsidized housing has been tough and he’s on multiple wait lists.
How serious is the housing crisis for Indigenous people?
Many Indigenous people, regardless of personal circumstances, are similarly finding the search for adequate housing of any kind challenging across the country, Indigenous housing advocates say.
As frustrations mount, Indigenous leaders say the country’s housing crisis disproportionately affects First Nations, Metis and Inuit people who live off-reserve.
They are pushing for Canada’s government to provide the nearly $3 billion in funds Justin Trudeau’s Liberals had promised to address these housing needs.
A 2022 report funded by the federal government found that 87 per cent of Indigenous households in Canada live in urban, rural and northern areas outside their traditional communities.
Other studies have found a higher housing need for the growing population of Indigenous people living off-reserve, with major gaps in the quality, supply and affordability of housing.
A 2021 report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer summarized census findings and other data on homelessness, noting Indigenous households represent less than five per cent of all households in Canada but seven per cent of all households in need of housing assistance.
About 40 per cent of homeless people in shelters across the country are Indigenous, according to a 2024 document from the federal Office of the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.
As well, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) research suggests the number of Indigenous households in housing need in urban, rural or northern areas is increasing due to the growing population and more people moving to urban places.
Advocates push for funding
Margaret Pfoh, part of the Indigenous Caucus of the non-profit Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, is among housing advocates urging the federal government to start delivering $2.8 billion in funding promised to Indigenous housing providers as part of the Urban, Rural and Northern (URN) Indigenous Housing Strategy. The yet-to-be-formed National Indigenous Housing Centre is supposed to dole out the money.
The Indigenous Caucus, which describes URN communities as places excluding First Nations reserves, is a group that represents organizations working to improve housing for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people.
“Pretty much every aspect of living that us as humans broadly experience is negatively impacted by the government’s current inability to fund and keep pace with the funding needs of housing for Indigenous Peoples across Canada,” Pfoh said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from Mission, B.C., on March 18.
The URN funding would help Indigenous housing providers nationwide meet a range of needs, according to Pfoh and the Indigenous Caucus. The funding may go towards helping homeless people access “stable” and affordable housing through rent subsidies as well as helping Indigenous people purchase homes, she said.
It may also fund child care, meals and other support services to help Indigenous people deal with substance use disorders and mental health issues connected to intergenerational trauma, poverty and systemic discrimination. Additionally, the money could improve and maintain existing housing units built in the 1960s and 1970s, Pfoh added.
‘Systemic and implicit biases’
Beyond her work, Pfoh personally knows the challenges Indigenous people face finding housing.
Pfoh is Tsimshian from the Eagle Clan of the Gitga’at First Nation, and recalled an experience with racism when she tried to find an apartment after becoming CEO of the Aboriginal Housing Management Association.
She said she was a good candidate for the apartment given her graduate degree and three decades of work experience, but when the landlord of the building in West Vancouver saw her, he simply walked past her. She said she believes he intentionally avoided her when he realized she was Indigenous, which he hadn’t known until he saw her waiting.
“And I never got that interview, and I never got that opportunity,” said Pfoh, who is also board president at Canadian Housing and Renewal Association.
Pfoh says her experience with discrimination impacting housing opportunities was not rare, as Indigenous people have for decades faced “systemic racism” and “systemic and implicit biases” when trying to find housing in the private market.
What was promised to help Indigenous people find housing?
As part of the URN strategy, the federal government committed $4 billion in Budget 2023 to be distributed over seven years, starting in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Indigenous advocates say the Liberal government had promised $2.8 billion out of the $4 billion to a yet-to-be-formed National Indigenous Housing Centre, a figure also noted in a 2024 document from the office of the housing minister. But the office said in March that the earmarked amount is now approximately $2.5 billion. It did not respond by deadline to a request to explain the decrease.
A CMHC spokesperson said in an email to CTVNews.ca on April 2 that the Crown corporation couldn’t provide any information or comments during the federal election.
The CMHC says on its website that it’s working with Indigenous partners to develop the URN strategy, which aims to improve the quality, supply and affordability of housing for Indigenous people off-reserve.
CMHC, a financial agency that delivers the government’s housing programs, last year began requesting bids from Indigenous-led groups to create the National Indigenous Housing Centre, according to a spokesperson from the minister’s office. Further details are expected to come this fall.
Here’s how the $4 billion in URN funding will be distributed, according to a 2024 document from the federal housing minister’s office:
-70 per cent, or $2.8 billion, will be provided through the National Indigenous Housing Centre;
-30 per cent, or $1.2 billion, will be distributed by Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to First Nations, Metis and Inuit governments and partners to support those living off-reserve.
When asked about Indigenous advocates’ concerns over the funding delay, the spokesperson for the housing minister’s office, which is separate from Indigenous Services Canada, told CTVNews.ca in an email March 19 that the funding for the URN strategy will be “progressively increasing over the seven years.”
The spokesperson provided numbers totalling $87.1 million – not including funding for the housing centre – out of the $1.2 billion that the government was directly distributing to some Indigenous communities by March 31.
Federal parties’ housing plans
Canada’s three largest federal parties were asked by CTVNews.ca how they plan to address the Indigenous housing crisis.
The NDP told CTVNews.ca that Indigenous housing will always be one of its priorities.
NDP candidate Blake Desjarlais, who served prior to the election call as NDP Indigenous housing critic and Edmonton Griesbach MP, said on March 18 that his party plans to make building affordable homes a priority.
“That is what’s going to solve the housing crisis, not just for Indigenous people, but for Canadians across the country,” he said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca.
Conservative candidate Jamie Schmale, then-Conservative shadow minister for Crown-Indigenous relations and Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP, told CTVNews.ca that his party plans to tackle the Indigenous housing crisis in a number of ways, including supporting the First Nations-led proposal to enable communities to gain greater benefit from resource development.
“We will fire the gatekeepers who block home building, tie federal infrastructure funding to home completions, and axe the GST from the sale of new homes under $1,000,000 to save Canadians up to $50,000 and spur the building of 30,000 new homes every year,” Schmale added in an email to CTVNews.ca on March 18 before the election was triggered.
• What are the federal parties pitching to cure Canada’s housing crisis?
The Liberal housing minister’s office said in an email on March 19 that the URN housing strategy and Indigenous housing are “a priority.”
“Our strong commitment to Indigenous housing will continue throughout projects and through the leadership of various Indigenous organizations,” the spokesperson told CTVNews.ca.
The Liberals didn’t respond by deadline to further requests for information on the URN funding and strategy or their plans for the funding if they form government again.
‘Step in the right direction’
Pfoh calls the promised funding for the housing strategy a “really good step in the right direction.”
But she and the Indigenous Caucus say they’re worried that delaying funding for housing programs could postpone hundreds of “shovel-ready” construction projects.
Pfoh says the yearlong delay of the housing centre being set up to distribute the $2.8 billion may be due to “bureaucratic bumbling.”
“We’ve lost a full year of construction, and it looks like we’re going to lose another year of construction,” she said.
• Are Indigenous issues on the election radar? What a few leaders think
Steve Teekens, executive director at Na-Me-Res (Native Men’s Residence) in Toronto, called the delay in funding “unjust” in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on March 17. Na-Me-Res provided Wesley a transitional home, a sense of community and support as he sought addiction treatment and applied to a college community health program.
Teekens said Na-Me-Res does not have the ability right now to build more housing beyond the 32 affordable housing units that are currently in the works.
“It’s not nearly enough to address the need that’s out there,” he said, noting the 47 units Na-Me-Res currently operates are full. “There needs to be a heck of a lot more done.”
