Submission to the National Housing Council on Accessible Housing
Accessible housing solutions must be rooted in dignity, autonomy, and choice.
Submitted to the National Housing Council, concerning their Review on the lack of accessible housing in Canada.
Written by Sacia Burton on behalf of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition
In the federal government’s pursuit of a nation where all people with disabilities are adequately housed, the government must be foundationally firm in its commitment to upholding the right to housing. Governments at all levels in Canada must recognize and treat housing as a human right, not a market commodity.
Defining Disability in Canada
In order to provide an appropriate level of housing and related supports for people with disabilities in Canada, jurisdictions must first align their parameters. Definitions of disability vary between provincial, territorial, and federal governments, setting people up for inequitable access to government supports. This is evidenced in the discrepancies during the rollout of the Canada Disability Benefit. According to Maytree’s 2025 edition of Social Assistance Summaries, “hundreds of thousands of people already assessed as having disabilities by their provinces or territories [are] excluded [from the Canada Disability Benefit] by a more restrictive federal definition.” This misalignment between jurisdictions on assistance eligibility raises the question of who may be left behind when setting the standards for social, nonprofit, and market housing for people with disabilities. Governments at all levels must align their eligibility and assessment standards towards inclusion.
Standards for Accessibility
People with disabilities are not a monolith to be supported through a sliver of policy intervention or the implementation of a standard unit. What is accessible for some will not meet others’ needs. People with disabilities and their allied advocates have called for policy measures and investment in accessible housing systems that ensure community integration, autonomy, choice, control, and dignity. People with disabilities must also have the housing needs of their family unit taken into consideration, with an understanding that accessibility across a unit may need to meet intersecting needs.
Accessibility does not stop at the doorway of a unit: it must include the full building and its situation within a neighbourhood and broader community. People with disabilities are not adequately housed if they cannot access the amenities, goods, and services they need beyond their home. Accessibility must be further integrated into all levels of community planning, with factors as simple as continuous sidewalks still one of the most straightforward and overlooked elements of appropriate neighbourhood planning.
Special consideration needs to be given to how housing people with disabilities is developed and offered outside urban areas. Conversations around accessibility are often rooted in urban spaces with the presumption that accessibility and density are interwoven. Care and consideration need to be given to people with accessibility needs in smaller communities in rural areas, including how support networks are established, maintained, and funded.
As climate change accelerates, the livability of our homes has shifted. Although there have been community-level efforts to provide cooling spaces for public use, there are myriad factors (such as access to transportation, personal mobility, safety, and accessibility within public space) that prohibit people with disabilities from reliably accessing these spaces with ease. For people with disabilities, it is crucial that reliable thermal safety can be accessed within the home. The federal government is poised to support the effective implementation of Right to Cool legislation being introduced in communities across the country through retrofit funding.
Affordability and Adequacy
For the hundreds of thousands of people in Canada accessing disability-related income assistance, many are trapped in legislated poverty by assistance rates that fall well below the poverty line. Those who earn income beyond assistance payments have their income restricted by clawbacks, which cap the total amount of money an individual can earn. Further restrictions are felt by couples who both receive disability assistance payments due to spousal cap legislation. Tight income restrictions (which are well within governments’ power to remove) drastically shrink the pool of within-budget housing options in an already limited accessible housing market. People living with disabilities across Canada are being forced to make inadequate, inappropriate, and at times unsafe housing options based on their income, not their needs.
We urge the federal government to work alongside provincial and territorial governments to ensure assistance rates exceed the poverty line, thus improving people with disabilities’ access to housing that meets their individual and familial needs.
Inclusion, Belonging, and Care
Standards of “acceptability” for accessing social and nonprofit housing have kept people with disabilities unhoused or living in inappropriate circumstances. Mandatory sobriety, limitations on guests, and limits on work conducted within the home place undue burden on those seeking supportive forms of housing. The extraordinary restrictions experienced by residents of social and nonprofit housing do not apply to people in private rentals or to those who own their own homes, thus cementing a schism of freedom within our society.
People living in social and nonprofit housing with restrictions that prevent or limit visitors are not afforded a dignified level of autonomy regarding their care networks. For residents of social or nonprofit housing with disabilities, visitation limits diminish their capacity to bolster formal health supports with an informal care team of friends and family. These limits also work in the opposite direction, restricting the care and support that people with disabilities can offer from within their own home. Peer-led housing models offer a higher level of inclusion than top-down housing management by ensuring that residents’ needs are communally agreed upon, upheld, and navigated interpersonally rather than punitively.
On the other end of the spectrum from inclusion is displacement and disconnection. The impacts of eviction are deeply felt by people with disabilities beyond the instability of financial and housing insecurity. People who are blind have worked to memorize their surroundings to get around safely and carry the weight of relearning a new environment, both in a new home and in their neighbourhood. Disconnection from neighbour-supported networks imperils people’s access to transportation, including to medical services and food access points.
Conclusion
In addition to the principles and recommendations outlined above, we recommend the following federal legislative steps and leadership actions:
collaboration with provincial and territorial governments to raise disability assistance rates above the poverty line, leveraging the Canada Disability Benefit as a clawback-exempt top-up;
activation of federal funds for retrofits to support Right to Cool policy realization;
coordination of housing as a human rights legislation to be enacted in each province to ensure a country-wide human-rights response to the housing crisis;
coordination with First Nations, Metis, and Inuit governments and coordination to improve access to adequate housing on- and off-reserve;
developing a framework for building government social housing on stolen Indigenous lands that benefits Indigenous peoples;
enshrining housing as a human right in the Canadian Human Rights Act; and
enshrining social condition as a protected ground in the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Members and community partners of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition have informed this report by contributing their expertise through focused conversations, policy co-development, and published research and reports. In particular, we wish to thank Disability Alliance BC, EcoTrust Canada, Inclusion BC, LETS, Maytree, and the UBC Center for Climate Justice for informing these recommendations.
