Vote Housing is a national non-partisan campaign with thousands of people and organizations across the country who are pledging to vote for candidates who support investing in affordable housing and ending homelessness.

In Canada, 1.7 million households live in a home that is either unaffordable, overcrowded and/or needs major repairs, while 35,000 Canadians experience homelessness on any given night. Further, 36 per cent of Canadians have been homeless themselves or know someone who has been homeless.

And according to a very recent Nanos Research poll, right now at least five million people across the country are worried about how they’ll be able to pay for their housing in September. This is unacceptable.

Homelessness and housing need have not always existed on the scale we see today. The rise of homelessness and so many living in unaffordable, unsafe housing is the direct result of federal withdrawal from investment in affordable housing and social services starting in the 1980s. Homelessness and a dire lack of affordable housing are linked. This situation was created by policy.

About eight in 10 Canadians say they support investing in new affordable housing and would be more supportive of a political party proposing action to end homelessness and build affordable housing.

Vote Housing’s 2021 federal election platform calls on all parties to:

1) Implement an urban, rural, and northern Indigenous housing strategy containing both dedicated investments and an Indigenous-led governance structure.

2) Commit to the prevention and elimination of homelessness.

3) Invest in the construction and operation of a minimum of 50,000 units of supportive housing over a decade.

4) Build and acquire a minimum of 300,000 units of deeply affordable non-market, co-op and non-profit housing over a decade.

5) Commit to the progressive realization of the right to housing, including measures to curtail the impact of financialization of rental housing markets.

6) Expand rental assistance for low-income households to reduce core housing need and prevent a wave of new homelessness resulting from the pandemic.