CCAP's Response to UN Rapporteaur Report on Housing Crisis in Canada

News release
For immediate release
October 22, 2007

Build social housing units, United Nations representative tells Canada

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Housing, Miloon Kothari, says
Canada should "once again embark on a large scale building of social housing units across the country" for a period of ten years. Kothari made his remarks in a preliminary report, after touring Canada for 2
weeks.

On this U.N. mission, Kothari says he "heard of hundreds of people who have died as a direct result of Canada's nation-wide housing crisis."
Kothari said it was "shocking" to see the number of homeless people in Canada and to see the housing and homelessness conditions faced by Aboriginal people on and off reserve. Noting that the federal
government has had multi-billion dollar surpluses every year since 1998, and that CMHC, the national housing agency, has a surplus of almost $1 billion, Kothari said the housing crisis was "even more
striking."

The report includes Kothari's preliminary observations. An official report will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council next year.

Kothari also called on our governments to implement a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy, and noted that "grossly inadequate social assistance rates are trapping many of the lowest income Canadian
households into chronic poverty and inadequate housing."

When Kothari was in Vancouver on October 16th, representatives from the Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) and other groups and individuals met with him to describe the housing and homelessness
situation in Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside. CCAP coordinator Jean Swanson, pointing out that both the federal and provincial governments have huge surpluses that they refuse to spend on affordable non market housing, asked Kothari if he could arrange to get foreign aid to build housing in the Downtown Eastside.

When Monte Paulsen, contributing Editor of the Tyee asked Kothari about CCAP's request for foreign aid, Kothari replied:
"I think its a valid request... The governments at all levels have failed to meet the needs.... Whether we can do anything with that request is difficult to say."

"There are very serious housing needs in this country that have been unmet.
And while Canada contributes to support housing or post-tsunami or other crises around the world, they also need to turn inward and look with open eyes at what is happening here."

Contact:
Jean Swanson, CCAP, 604 729-2380
Wendy Pedersen, CCAP, 604 839-0379