Recognizing the intersections of policy and its lived experience impacts is not always easy to do. It can be even more difficult to determine the most suitable solutions when we are presented with systemic challenges, such as gendered barriers to accessing housing, and ensuring the solutions to these challenges are developed with equitable and inclusive lenses is no easy feat. However, as I sat in a meeting on Parliament Hill with young feminist leaders last month, it was clear that we not only see and understand the systemic challenges impacting our communities, but we also are equipped with solutions to meet them.
In early October, YWCA staff, CEOs, and board members from across the country came together in Ottawa for YWCA Canada’s 2023 Day on the Hill. During the week, we spoke with Members of Parliament, Senators, and government staff, as we collectively called for one goal; a gendered response to the housing crisis. Specifically, we were asking for a reuptake and increase in funding for the Women and Children’s Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative.
Simply put, women, gender diverse people, and their families, are experiencing some of the most significant housing needs in Canada; one in four women-led, single-parent households live in unsuitable, inadequate, or unaffordable housing. One in three single mothers in Canada are raising their children in poverty, often forgoing essential necessities such as food or child care to be able to afford rent. The impacts of the housing crisis are intrinsically linked to gender-based violence (GBV) and intimate partner violence (IPV). When experiencing intimate partner violence, survivors need places to go to feel safe, to feel supported, to begin their healing and to plan for the future. Without transitional shelter support and affordable long-term housing solutions, survivors are often left to return to their abusers or are forced into homelessness.
At YWCA Toronto, we see the positive impacts that emergency shelter and transitional housing supports can have every day. Emergency shelters and housing supports not only provide safe spaces for women, gender diverse people, and their families, but also the space and opportunity to pause and reflect on their experiences and begin rebuilding their lives. Transitional support can include one-on-one counselling, safety planning, assistance finding housing, and referrals to lawyers, doctors, and community resources. As providers of these resources to women, gender diverse people, and their families across the country, YWCA’s know how integral transitional supports and other wrap around support services are to ensuring long-term stability for people fleeing violence.
In 2022, the year following the initial rollout of the Women and Children’s Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative, the funding was four times oversubscribed by domestic violence shelters, women’s organizations and nonprofit housing providers with shovel-ready projects. Essentially, the funding was limited, despite the fact that projects were ready to go. The lack of funding means fewer services for women, gender diverse people, and their families to turn to every night, including the approximately 699 women and 236 accompanying children who seek safety at domestic violence shelters each night but must be turned away due to shelters being at capacity. Greater support is required for emergency shelter and transitional housing for women, gender diverse peoples, and their families.
If Canada wants to take seriously its commitment to ending gender-based violence, we must apply a gender-equity lens when developing solutions for the housing crisis.
It can be easy to feel frustrated by policy failure; to see the challenges your own community is facing and feel like there are no tangible solutions, or to have the solutions but the public alertness of the cause and financial support from our governments is just not there. YWCA Canada’s Day on the Hill brought together feminist voices from coast to coast, all unified in knowing that despite the challenges our communities face, we are here, ready and willing to work alongside our partners and members to make solutions happen. Nonprofit feminist service providers are equipped with the knowledge, experience, and shovel-ready projects to develop solutions for housing for women, girls, and gender diverse people across Canada. We just need the political will to actualize solutions for the gendered housing crisis; the country’s future free from gender-based violence and homelessness depend on it.