On June 16, 2025, the Women’s National Housing & Homelessness Network (WNHHN) and the National Indigenous Women’s Housing Network (NIWHN) were joined by the Federal Housing Advocate in the first virtual oral dialogue hosted by the National Housing Council’s Neha Review Panel. This dialogue marked a historic moment: the first-ever national human rights virtual oral hearing focused on the right to housing for women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people in Canada.
It was a powerful opportunity to speak truth to power, to uplift lived experience, and to call for bold, rights-based, gender-just housing reform.
Together, WNHHN and NIWHN submitted written claims in 2022 detailing how Canada’s housing crisis violates international and domestic human rights obligations. The oral dialogue brought those claims to life through testimony rooted in community, evidence, and generations of advocacy.
“What We Are Experiencing in This Country Is a Human Rights Crisis” — WNHHN
In her opening statement, Arlene Hache, Co-Chair of WNHHN, reflected on how the Network came to be: born out of a shared determination to ensure that gendered experiences of homelessness are no longer invisible or ignored. Since its founding in 2020, WNHHN has built an evidence base through national reports, gender-based analyses, and Canada’s largest-ever survey on housing from a gender lens.
And then they took it further.
In 2022, WNHHN convened a Human Rights Task Force to draft a formal claim to the Federal Housing Advocate. Shaped by lived experience, that claim documents how women and gender-diverse people are being pushed into homelessness by systems that are functioning exactly as designed—prioritizing profit over people and keeping power out of the hands of those most affected.
“Women, Two-Spirit, trans, and gender-diverse people across Canada face an invisible housing crisis—one shaped by violence, colonization, racism, poverty, and patriarchy,” Hache told the panel. “Their homelessness is hidden, undercounted, and deeply misunderstood.”
From inadequate shelter access to punitive definitions of chronic homelessness, WNHHN’s testimony outlined how gendered realities are excluded from the current system—despite the promise of the National Housing Strategy Act.
But the Network didn’t stop at diagnosis. They mobilized over 50 Community Champions, held webinars and engagement sessions, and supported nearly 200 people with lived experience in submitting written testimony to the panel.
Their message was urgent:
“We are out of time. Lives have been lost. Ground has been lost.”
“Housing Is More Than Shelter. It’s Safety, Healing, and Sovereignty” — NIWHN
Speaking on behalf of NIWHN, Marie McGregor Pitawanakwat shared a statement grounded in inter-generational truth, lived experience, and the legacy of Indigenous resistance.
She described NIWHN as a grassroots, Indigenous-led network working to end housing injustice for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, girls, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people. The Network began in response to the glaring absence of Indigenous women’s leadership in housing policy—an absence rooted in colonialism.
“These are not isolated experiences,” she told the panel. “They are part of a larger pattern of systemic failure.”
Their joint 2022 human rights claim with WNHHN outlines how Indigenous women and gender-diverse people face overcrowding, violence in shelters, family separation due to housing inaccessibility, and discriminatory service provision—all of which violate rights enshrined in Canadian and international law.
Pitawanakwat drew a direct line between colonial policies—residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, discriminatory housing programs—and today’s housing crisis. She emphasized the urgent need for Indigenous-led, culturally grounded, gender-inclusive housing solutions that reflect Indigenous ways of life, kinship, and care.
“Despite these barriers, our communities continue to lead. We continue to organize, advocate, and build solutions from the ground up,” she said.
“We assert our rights not just as resistance—but as acts of love, care, and vision for future generations.”
What’s Next: From Dialogue to Action
The virtual oral dialogues will be publicly posted in the coming weeks, making this testimony available to all (stay tuned for more information, we’ll share as soon as it’s available).
But the momentum cannot end there.
Together, WNHHN and NIWHN have clearly shown that the housing crisis is a gendered and colonial crisis. And it is a crisis of accountability.
As we await the final report and recommendations from the Review Panel, we remain committed to pushing forward—to mobilizing communities, uplifting lived expertise, and demanding action that reflects the truth spoken in this dialogue.
Because housing is a human right.
And rights must be realized—not in policy alone, but in practice, in community, and in every life touched by this crisis.
