The 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS) is set to expire in 2027/28. Discussions are happening now on what a future national housing strategy should look like. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness has developed a five-point plan that can deliver housing security for hundreds of thousands of low-income Canadians on the verge of losing their homes, and achieve significant, visible reductions in homelessness within the next five years. 

To seize that opportunity, we have to understand why the last strategy failed to stem the surging tide of homelessness we’ve seen since it was introduced. The expiring NHS faced unexpected headwinds as rising cost of living and global economic turmoil drove homelessness to record levels. But the strategy also had design issues that we can learn from, like the lack of an embedded homelessness strategy and the emphasis on outputs instead of outcomes (e.g. total units created instead of reducing homelessness).  

The next national housing strategy is not the moment for small steps; it’s the moment to deliver. We know what works. The evidence is clear, the tools exist, and the will is building. What’s needed now is federal leadership, and partnership with all levels of government, to bring it all together at the scale and with the urgency that the crisis demands.  

To deliver for Canadians, here are five things the federal government should include in the next national housing strategy: 

1. Create a housing safety net: Improve the Canada Housing Benefit to prevent homelessness. 

Right now, more than 750,000 households in our country – nearly one million Canadians – are at imminent risk of homelessness due to high rent, low vacancy, low income, and soaring cost of living, based on new analysis of the minimum income that households need to meet their basic needs. 

Homelessness has nearly doubled since 2018, and many people experiencing homelessness cannot afford to rent even the cheapest units in their community. Building new affordable housing is the permanent solution to homelessness, but new homes take years before people can move in, and we need to support people now, while those new homes are built.  

The federal government already has a tool that can be re-imagined to do just that. The Canada Housing Benefit was introduced as part of the last National Housing Strategy, to support low-income renters to help them stay housed. But as it currently stands, it doesn’t reach the people most at risk, the amounts are too small to close the gap between what low-income renters earn and what housing actually costs, and it’s inconsistent across provinces – so support varies by where people live. 

As the federal government negotiates the next version of a national housing strategy, a transformed Canada Housing Benefit can be the single most powerful tool for rapid homelessness prevention at their disposal. That means a housing safety net that: 

• Meaningfully supports the lowest-income renters by ensuring that those who receive the benefit are most at risk of homelessness, based on a new approach – the homelessness income cut-off (HICO) – that takes into account someone’s ability to pay for basic necessities as well as their housing costs. 
• Is tied to the person instead of to a unit, which provides important flexibility (and does not require disclosure to landlords, to avoid rent inflation); and 
• Provides consistent support for Canadians in every province and territory, based on clear national standards. 

In a new report that we’ll be releasing in the coming weeks, CAEH worked with Blueprint to analyse the current Benefit and determine the impact of an improved benefit focused on preventing and reducing homelessness. By modeling the impact in key regional centres, we found this approach could reduce homelessness by as much as 63% within two years of implementation.  

Creating a housing safety net through a transformed Canada Housing Benefit is the best way we can make rapid progress on homelessness and housing need while the longer-term work of building more affordable housing continues. 

2. Invest in deeply affordable and supportive housing 

Canada needs more housing, but not all housing works for all Canadians. Landmark federal homebuilding programs under the expiring National Housing Strategy largely failed to reach Canadians experiencing or at the greatest risk of homelessness, delivering investments based on inconsistent definitions of affordability, in most cases linked to the housing market instead of what people could actually afford to spend. 

Deeply affordable housing needs to be affordable for the lowest-income Canadians at 30% of their gross income – a commonly accepted measure of affordability that understands people need something left over after rent for other basic needs like groceries, transportation, utilities, and medication. As the cost of many of these basic goods and services continue to rise, unaffordable rent is forcing impossible choices and contributing to the rise of homelessness. 

Right now, Canada is lagging behind our international partners in terms of the percentage of housing stock that’s considered social housing. Other nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average 7% of their housing stock identified as social housing, while Canada is only at 3.5%. Closing this gap is an important step to increase rental options and affordability for the long term. 

The next national housing strategy should include a dedicated plan to at least double Canada’s current social housing stock and dedicated investment to expand deeply affordable and supportive housing: 

• Create 575,000 units of additional social housing to bring Canada up to the OECD average; 
• Create 30,000 to 50,000 units of supportive housing, which can include both place-based supportive housing as well as funding for Housing First scattered site approaches in partnership with provinces and territories; 
• Establish an Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy;
• Repair and maintain existing affordable housing. 

To achieve this rapid expansion of deeply affordable and supportive housing, Canada will need a sustainable funding system that includes non-governmental financing, drawing on proven models from other countries. For more on this, see the analysis and recommendations from the National Housing Council in their second letter on the future of the national housing strategy. 

3. Establish intensive supportive housing for people with severe cognitive impairment 

There isn’t currently an appropriate housing solution for a small but growing number of people living with the most acute and complex health challenges – severe, permanent brain injuries and cognitive impairment from head trauma, opioid overdoses, or serious mental illness – often compounded over years.  

Right now, people experiencing homelessness who have lost the capacity to reliably take medications, keep appointments, or maintain a tenancy are locked in a cycle between the street, emergency rooms, shelters, and jail – denying them safety and stability and straining communities, all at incredible cost to our public systems. Any other Canadian with the same level of impairment, like those with Alzheimer’s or dementia, would have access to long-term care for permanent, individualized support.   

Intensive Housing is the equivalent of long-term care for people who need 24/7 supervised care, nursing support, medication, and structured daily support built around clinical need and human dignity. 

The next national housing strategy should: 

• Invest $2 billion in capital funding to build a minimum of 6,000 Intensive Housing units across Canada; and 
• Establish a funding framework to operate these units, developed with provinces and territories, who deliver health and social services on the ground.  

Meaningful investments in Intensive Housing would fill a critical gap in our housing system and support the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. 

4. Build a National Homelessness Strategy  

The current National Housing Strategy didn’t include a strategy for the prevention, reduction and elimination of homelessness. Without that national plan, communities across the country are stuck managing crisis after crisis with limited resources, negotiating piecemeal with federal and provincial/territorial counterparts, instead of moving forward on shared goals with support for actual solutions. And without a strong homelessness strategy and clear reduction targets, federal, provincial/territorial and municipal investments can’t be aligned. With the National Housing Strategy up for renewal, that has to change. 

Canada already ends homelessness rapidly every year – when people with housing lose their homes through natural disaster. We should follow a similar approach with a strong focus on local leadership, supported by senior government, that is driven by data and continuous improvement. Importantly, the approach in a natural disaster focuses on getting people into a safe place and back into their homes as quickly as possible, while putting in place prevention measures to stop the natural disaster from making people homeless again. 

A National Homelessness Strategy, embedded in the new housing strategy, means: 

• Clearly defining Canada’s approach to homelessness, rooted in solving, not just managing it; 
• A dynamic, adaptive approach with clear targets, shared outcomes, and accountability for results; 
• An initial focus on reducing unsheltered, chronic and veteran homelessness; 
• Housing investment is aligned with the homelessness reduction goal, with specific support for deeply affordable, supportive and Intensive Housing. 
• A model that lets communities lead, using timely data that knows every person experiencing homelessness and their needs, coordinates collective action across local systems, and grows more effective every day at reducing homelessness; 
• Re-imagining Reaching Home as an outcomes focused, flexible, data-driven community systems program tied to measurable reduction targets; 
• Funding for shelter transformation, veteran homelessness reduction and unsheltered homelessness resolution programs; 
• An expanded Homelessness Reduction Innovation Fund to support communities to rapidly achieve homelessness reduction projects in the field; 
• Aligning the homelessness strategy with the Canada Housing Accord, Build Canada Homes, the Canada Housing Benefit, and other federal investments in supportive housing, Indigenous housing and encampment resolution.  

5. Lay the Foundation for Change with Team Canada: Negotiate a Canada Housing Accord  

When a natural disaster strikes Canada, all levels of government pull together. Communities lead, and senior governments support in their areas of jurisdiction. The homelessness crisis is the same level of emergency, and it deserves the same response. In too many cases, when one order of government stepped up on housing or homelessness, another stepped back. Perhaps the clearest example of this was supportive housing, where success requires both federal investment in capital costs and provincial/territorial health and social services. Without shared commitments and clear roles vital projects founder, no matter how great the need. 

The next National Housing Strategy should take a better approach, one that’s happened before with health care and childcare negotiations. By establishing shared goals, timelines, accountability and role clarity, we can coordinate efforts and get everyone working together for a Canada where everyone has a safe place to call home.  

A Canada Housing Accord is a negotiated, intergovernmental agreement that: 

• Establishes shared national principles on housing and homelessness; 
• Sets clear, measurable, time-bound outcomes that all governments commit to achieving; 
• Defines the roles and responsibilities of federal, provincial/territorial, and municipal governments reducing overlap, red tape and costly delays; 
• Ties federal transfers to provincial commitments and accountability requirements; 
• Aligns housing investment to achieve a homelessness reduction aims; 
• Creates a data-sharing framework to track progress and embeds continuous improvement. 

As part of a new national housing strategy, the federal government should commit to negotiating a Canada Housing Accord with provinces and territories. By clarifying roles, targets, and commitments up-front, a Canada Housing Accord is the foundation that makes everything else possible.    

Read more about the Canada Housing Accord here. 

The Bottom Line 

Instead of allowing the lethal trajectory of homelessness to continue, Canada can build a better approach that will deliver meaningful reductions we will feel and see in just five years. We know what works and will is building to deliver on the transformational shift to rapidly reduce homelessness and fix the housing crisis. 

Over the coming weeks we’ll be laying out more detail on each of these pillars, launching groundbreaking research that shows why these measures are so important, and bringing together Canadians to make their voices heard by our government leaders. 

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Homelessness ends when every Canadian has a place to call home. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness is the catalyst that’s uniting communities, governments, and tens of thousands of Canadians to make that happen.