A “next-generation” plan that invests in our future must account for the unique housing needs of women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people, including Indigenous and racialized populations, newcomers and refugees, people with disabilities, and our aging population. An ambitious generational budget would break the inter-generational cycles that otherwise reproduce homelessness and housing insecurity.
Women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people often experience hidden forms of homelessness, including staying in unsafe or overcrowded housing, couch surfing, or remaining in violent relationships for lack of alternatives. Indigenous women and gender-diverse people are disproportionately impacted, experiencing compounded racial and systemic barriers that persist as colonial legacies.
Women are often the primary caregivers and heads of single or low-income households in this country – and are some of the first to fall into housing precarity amidst rising costs. Children who grow up in homelessness or housing precarity are more likely to experience instability throughout their lives, and far more likely to become chronically homeless as adults. A failure to recognize the cyclical nature of gendered homelessness is a failure to recognize homelessness itself.
The government’s significant capital for Build Canada Homes indicates a serious commitment to increasing the housing supply. And the recent $660 million investment announced by Women and Gender Equity Canada shows that gender equality is finally being recognized as essential infrastructure. These investments are critical opportunities to address the issue and are real steps forward.
But they are only meaningful if the benefits reach the communities most burdened by housing insecurity.
If this government is serious about shaping the next generation, then women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people must be a priority in the budget, yet they remain invisible in the federal housing plan, beyond mentions in shelter and transitional housing investments. We must build homes that are not only deeply affordable, but also accessible — for women and gender-diverse people with disabilities, and for seniors who deserve to age in dignity.
Gender-neutral housing policy is never neutral. It reproduces inequity and leaves the majority of those in core housing need behind.
Later this month, the National Housing Council’s Neha Review Panel will release its recommendations on Canada’s duty to uphold the right to housing for women and gender-diverse people. These upcoming recommendations to the Minister of Housing will offer an evidence-based blueprint to address the housing equity gap, but only if the government commits to them.
If federal dollars are not guided by gender, accessibility, and Indigenous rights, then Budget 2025 risks spending billions on building units that will not reach those with the least access today. Canada cannot build its way out of this crisis without building differently, and ensuring housing is purpose-built to address the unique family structures and affordability realities of this country’s most vulnerable households.
WNHHN’s three core implementation priorities remain urgent and unchanged:
1. Develop an enhanced Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) framework that is rooted in Indigenous knowledge and principles and is specific to housing development, in collaboration with community partners and people with lived experience of housing insecurity. This framework must guide and inform all federal housing investments and decision-making to not only ensure equitable outcomes.
2. Allocate at least 40% of affordable and deeply affordable housing units for women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people that are developed through federal investments by Build Canada Homes or CMHC. In understanding the unique needs of women-led, single-parent households, and how they are disproportionately overrepresented in housing insecurity data, this allocation ensures that the federal housing budget is utilized strategically, compared to a one-size-fits-all approach.
3. Commit $50 million annually over 8 years to create an Indigenous-governed Gendered Homelessness Stream within Reaching Home.
Budget 2025 must also fund Indigenous-governed housing infrastructure. Canada must finally commit sustained, multi-year core funding to the Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy. This funding must be long-term, stable, and scaled to need. WNHHN supports the calls from the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA) Indigenous Caucus and National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Inc. (NICHI) regarding necessary federal funding allocations.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne called Budget 2025 “the most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War.” But, ambitious for whom? This was not historically an era of fairness or equity for women—especially not Indigenous women, racialized women, single mothers, or the 2SLGBTQQIA communities.
We cannot retrofit equality into frameworks that were not built for us. A truly next-generation housing plan must build equity in from the start and be unprecedented in its own right.