A new policy brief from the Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network calls on the federal government to overhaul how it defines, funds, and responds to homelessness among women and gender-diverse people.
A new policy brief to the federal government identifies key gaps in how federal homelessness policy defines, measures, and funds supports for women and gender-diverse people—and makes four concrete recommendations for how to address them.
The Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network (WNHHN) has submitted a policy brief to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) on June 19 as part of the committee’s review of the Reaching Home program.
Women and gender-diverse people experiencing homelessness are frequently not counted in standard homelessness data because their experiences don’t fit the visible, rough-sleeping profile that most programs are built around. Instead, they may be couch surfing, staying in unsafe or overcrowded housing to maintain child custody, remaining in abusive relationships because affordable alternatives don’t exist, or engaging in high-risk survival strategies to keep a roof over their heads.
This is known as hidden homelessness, and its impacts are significant. Data from the 2026 Unaddressed Project in Calgary found that more than half of women and gender-diverse survey respondents experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity reported surviving trauma or abuse, and 18% reported remaining in an unwanted relationship for financial support — rising to 50% among Indigenous women in the study.
When these experiences aren’t captured in data, they’re also left out of policy responses and funding decisions. The WNHHN’s brief makes the case for changing that across four areas.
Here are WNHHN’s recommendations:
1. Reaching Home must expand the definition of chronic homelessness to include distinct forms of homelessness experienced disproportionately by women and gender-diverse people. This includes recognizing gendered experiences of homelessness such as hidden homelessness and the use of high-risk survival strategies to maintain shelter (e.g., survival sex) as episodes of chronic homelessness among women and gender-diverse people.
2. Revise Reaching Home’s definition of “chronic homelessness” to include the cyclical housing instability experienced by women and gender-diverse people, including repeated housing loss following maximum length-of-stay limits in transitional housing and recurring movement between homelessness, incarceration, community re-entry, and recidivism.
3. Establish an Indigenous-governed gendered housing and homelessness stream under Reaching Home that invests $50 million annually over eight-years in housing and homelessness supports and services for women and gender-diverse people across Canada, as recommended by the Neha Review Panel.
4. Invest in low-barrier permanent supportive housing for women and gender-diverse people experiencing homelessness and/or fleeing violence. In doing so, we strongly urge the federal government to:
- Allocate at least 40% of affordable and deeply affordable housing units through Build Canada Homes to women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people, ensuring that federal housing investments do not rely on a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Develop and embed an enhanced Gender-Based Analysis (GBA+) Framework within Build Canada Homes that is grounded in Indigenous knowledge and co-developed with individuals who have lived experience of homelessness and housing insecurity. This should include clear implementation timelines and measurable targets to end homelessness and housing precarity.
Read WNHHN’s brief, Advancing Indigenous-Led, Gender-Responsive Housing Reform within Reaching Home and across Federal Housing and Homelessness Initiatives by clicking here.