Item - 2024.HS4.7

The Housing Rights Advisory Committee:

1. Invited Leilani Farha, Global Director of The Shift and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to present at today’s Housing Rights Advisory Committee meeting on applying a human rights-based approach to housing and identifying human rights outcomes that municipalities can work toward.

2. Confirmed its support of the following:

a. Housing Rights Advisory Committee is seriously concerned with the proposal by mayors in Ontario, and the Premier of Ontario, to invoke the notwithstanding clause in order to override the Charter rights of individuals who are unhoused and unsheltered in Ontario cities by clearing encampments, imposing involuntary treatment and incarceration for repeated trespass. This contravenes our commitments under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It fundamentally opposes the right to life and security of the person as protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and is inconsistent with the National Housing Strategy Act;

b. Housing Rights Advisory Committee strongly encourages the City of Toronto to continue its work and commitment under the Toronto Housing Charter to realize the right to housing for every resident in this city.

Guest speaker Leilani Farha gave a presentation on Building a Common Understanding of Housing Rights.

Following discussion arising from Item HS1.5 - Building a Common Understanding of Housing Rights, I believe that the committee should invite opportunities to expand its housing rights knowledge and increase its capacity to fulfill its mandate, in particular, to provide advice to City Council:

a) on policies, programs and actions that the City can implement to advance its commitment to furthering the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing in Toronto based on housing and human rights expertise, lived experiences of housing precarity, discrimination and homelessness, and academic research and learnings from other jurisdictions.