While the housing crisis has become particularly acute across the country since the pandemic, it has been plaguing Indigenous communities for a very long time.
“Aboriginal people are disproportionately affected by poor housing conditions,” Statistics Canada said in its report published last year.
Indigenous people are more likely than non-Indigenous people to report living in overcrowded housing.
They are twice as likely to live in a home that requires major repairs and three times more likely to report having mold in their home and unsafe water than non-Indigenous people.
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN), meeting in congress this week in Montreal, estimates that an investment of 44 billion dollars is necessary to meet the needs.
Last March, Canada’s Auditor General, Karen Hogan, said she was “absolutely disheartened to see how little the situation has changed” in 20 years.
Between 2018 and 2023, the government has provided funding to build 12,000 new homes and repair 16,000 existing homes… about a fifth of what is needed to fill existing gaps, Mr.me Hogan.
“We don’t want anything more than what other Canadians want,” Cindy Woodhouse, AFN Manitoba regional chief, told Radio-Canada last year.
“We want good water, good housing, safe housing. And we don’t want to be crammed 30 to a house.”