The housing crisis started with lack of investment in affordable housing, not modern immigration policies.

In the early 1990s, the federal goverment retreated from building affordable housing. “Between 1973 and 1994, Canada built or acquired around 16,000 non-profit or co-operative homes every year. Between 1994 and 2016, that number dropped to just 1,500 homes a year (source).” We are now several decades into the consequences of lack of investment in non-market housing. 

“When [Ottawa] retreated from the housing market, they allowed the private sector to invade the space and come in a very unregulated way,” said Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (source).

Between 2011 and 2021, Canada lost 15 affordable homes for every new one created. Now, Canada’s non-market housing sector makes up only 3.5% of our housing system which is a much smaller percentage than other western nations.

Read this for information debunking immigration’s impact on housing.

Simply building more housing will not solve the housing crisis.

Vancouver increased its housing stock by over 200% from 1960 to 2020 while its population grew by only 78% and yet housing affordability still declined dramatically. Vancouver is now widely known as one of the cities most severely impacted by the housing crisis. 

A coalition of Canadian housing and economics researchers wrote the following, “Let’s be clear: the private market alone will never build enough homes at the right price points to solve this crisis. Developers won’t overbuild and drive prices down. Lenders won’t finance projects they believe won’t sell. No amount of tax relief or deregulation will change these basic market dynamics. Government must step in — not as a builder of last resort, but as steward of a system that balances profit, purpose, and public need.” 

In July 2025, 27 experts in urban planning and architecture came together to write a letter to the Canadian government outlining real solutions: “We believe the federal government can lead the way by restoring affordability as the central objective of housing policy. That means resisting short-term pressure to rescue flawed models and instead embracing long-term investment in public, non-profit and community-led housing.“

Read more here about what Canadian housing experts say will fix this crisis.

Supportive housing is socially and fiscally responsible.

Free transitional and supportive housing is a fundamental piece to addressing the homelessness crisis on our streets. Shelters are not housing and trying to house people with complex needs in non-supportive housing sets them up for failure.

If you are concerned about our government’s ability to pay for more supportive housing, the good news is that it is actually cheaper than the status quo.

“At Dunn House in Toronto, a 51-unit ‘social medicine’ supportive housing facility, the monthly cost to house someone is estimated at $4,000. That’s far less expensive than the monthly cost for someone staying in a public hospital ($60,000), in a provincial jail ($15,000), or in a shelter ($6,000)

Researchers found that local hospitals spent $1.66 million less on hospital stays for the 48 residents who suddenly had a home and direct health access once they moved into Dunn House. Importantly, the facility created permanent housing and supports for 51 people experiencing homelessness.”

Read more here about Dunn House.

Colonial harms are ongoing. 

“Prior to first contact, Indigenous people on Turtle Island were never unhoused. Ever. We lived on this continent for thousands and thousands of years and no human being was ever unhoused. That’s a colonial system.” -Advocate and Outreach Worker Judith Gale in ‘Our women, they get lost on the street’: On the front lines of Edmonton’s Indigenous unhoused crisis.

A decade after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, most calls haven’t been fulfilled. Indigenous overrepresentation in spaces like prisons, emergency rooms, and homeless shelters is treated as a personal failure rather than a systemic one. As a result, there are more Indigenous children in government care today than at the height of residential schools. In a city like Saskatoon where the majority of the people living on our streets are Indigenous, it is imperative that we confront the well-established relationship between colonial harms and trauma, substance use, crime rates, homelessness, and poor health in modern Indigenous communities. 

“Homelessness is a problem of income inequality, colonization, racism, and other structural factors that are not expected to be addressed with a programmatic response. Indeed, until we ‘turn off the tap’ by challenging the root causes of inequity, the scale of need will continue to expand unchecked and unaccounted for (source).”

Read more here about the relationship between colonialism and wealth inequality.

Wealth inequality doesn’t have to be the norm.

Saskatchewan has the second lowest minimum wage in Canada. 86 wealthy Canadian families hold as much wealth as our country’s 6.2 million least wealthy families. Food bank use has reached an all-time high.

Everyone deserves to be able to afford to live well. And even if you feel you make enough money to live, income inequality has a well-studied spillover effect on society at large, raising crime rates, reducing social cohesion, and impairing democracy.

We don’t have to just accept the fact that our current economy isn’t benefitting regular people. There are many other options for economic models such as the wellbeing economy which prioritizes people and our planet over profit. Or more immediate solutions like universal basic income which address income inequality at the root and actually encourage positive participation in society. 

Skeptical about how your government could pay for new social programs? One suggestion is a wealth tax to fund public services and address widening income inequality. Did you know that Canada is losing out on $15 billion tax dollars every year from corporations because of lax rules around tax havens that could be changed? That’s money that could be used to strengthen our public services and social safety net.

Demand better from our leaders but build better in your own neighbourhood in the meantime.

It is critically important that our government leaders hear from citizens who endorse evidence-based solutions to our shared social issues. Systemic change within healthcare or housing or social assistance etc. will require massive shifts in government policy and elected officials need to know that their constituents demand it. However, you don’t have to just wait around until that happens — there are many other ways to lead change within your community!

• Having your rental rights/right to housing violated? Start a tenant union.
• Being priced out of your neighbourhood? Look into a community land trust.
• Struggling to afford childcare? Use this grant to start a childcare co-operative. 
• Worried about your neighbours? Get involved with mutual aid.
• Don’t know where you or your parents will live as you age? Look into creating more co-housing.
• Want to give back to your community? Open a business that serves social value instead of profit. 

Here are a few more inspiring stories of creative responses to our current moment:

• When they couldn’t afford to build new housing on their reserve, shíshálh Nation partnered with a development company that rescues existing homes from being demolished. 
• When their building went up for sale, these Hamilton tenants took ownership of their building and turned it into co-operative housing.
• Six years ago, a young Ontario woman started a sustainable business where all employees including herself are paid the same amount and make a living wage — and it’s thriving!