The right to housing in a neoliberal and colonial context

In Canada, emerging discussions about colonialism and ongoing retrenchment from the welfare state, including social housing, accentuate the urgency of addressing housing need in ways that uphold both human and Indigenous rights. Through questionnaires and interviews with 28 non-profit housing providers in British Columbia, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, this paper examines the intersection of human and Indigenous rights with the provision of low-rent non-market housing. It identifies barriers and strategies to advancing the right to housing in Canada's settler-colonial capitalist context and, in doing so, articulates possibilities for new policies upholding housing as a human and Indigenous right.