On Friday, May 15, the Centre’s executive director Stephan Corriveau joined Leilani Farha, former United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing, and other experts to talk about housing, poverty and pandemic policies. During his presentation, he highlighted important elements about the community housing sector and the Centre’s role and possible contribution.

“I would like to introduce the Community Housing Transformation Centre, as we are a new organization. Our mission is to stimulate, enhance and support resilience and growth of the community housing sector. We see this as a key component to achieving the Right to Housing for All.

So far, the private sector has received support to protect mortgage loan payments. Vulnerable tenants are still waiting to see the long-term programs introduced to support the community housing sector. People living in this sector are amongst the most vulnerable, are older, have lower incomes, and higher rates of mental and physical health challenges.

The pandemic has highlighted our decade-old claims about homelessness being a serious public health problem. Before the crisis 1.7 million households were not housed properly. There is no doubt the situation is worse now and unless we take serious action, that can improve the capacity and sustainably develop the community housing sector, the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be substantially larger than its immediate impact for millions of Canadians.”

Thank you to Canada Without Poverty for organizing this roundtable exchange! The Centre is looking forward to future collaborations with other panellists to ensure that every individual has a decent place to call home.