French version available here.
Executive summary
Canada’s housing crisis is widely recognized—as limited housing supply and a financialized housing market fuel unaffordability, competition, exclusion, and displacement—yet its uneven impact on racialized and Indigenous communities remains largely unaddressed. This report synthesizes extensive literature on racial inequities in Canada’s housing market, highlighting how systemic racism continues to exclude Indigenous, Black, Arab, Latin American, and other racialized and immigrant communities from stable, affordable housing.
The analysis identifies persistent and widening gaps in home-ownership rates and home values, compounded by discriminatory practices deeply embedded in historical and contemporary policy, finance, and urban planning. Racial disparities manifest clearly in rental markets with discriminatory landlord practices, covert exclusion mechanisms, and inadequate enforcement of anti-discrimination laws reinforcing cycles of housing instability. The situation is particularly acute for Black and Indigenous communities whose experiences of homelessness and unsuitable housing conditions are disproportionately severe and exacerbated by historical disinvestment and systemic racism.
The racial housing gap, key facts and figures:
- Black, Arab, and Latin American households face homeownership rates over 26 percentage points below the national average and more than 30 points below white households.
- The largest racial gaps are seen among Inuit (-46.7pp) and First Nations (-34.1pp) households.
- Black homes are valued at 30% less than comparable white homes, Latin American homes at 26% less, and Indigenous homes at 16% less.
- Newcomer men with racialized accents were 267% more likely to face discrimination in their search for a rental unit.
- Newcomer single mothers looking for a rental unit were 563% more likely to be treated unfairly than their child-free counterparts.
- Indigenous people represent 31% of national shelter users, despite comprising only 4.9% of Canada’s population.
- Black individuals account for 31% of Toronto’s homeless population, yet they are only 9% of the city’s population.
Canada urgently needs more housing stock overall and increasing supply can help ease competition and reduce opportunities for discriminatory gatekeeping in tight markets. However, racial equity in housing cannot be left to the mechanisms of supply and demand alone. Meaningful progress requires structural reform and rights-based policy interventions that address the roots of exclusion, such as:
- Establishing robust, disaggregated, race-based housing data to inform equitable policies and accountability.
- Fully implementing Indigenous-led housing strategies that respect and support Indigenous jurisdiction and governance.
- Drastically expanding affordable housing supply, prioritizing investments in Indigenous, Black, and community-led housing projects.
- Dismantling systemic barriers, enhancing tenant protections, and improving enforcement against discrimination.
- Pairing housing solutions with culturally appropriate holistic support services for marginalized groups.
- Addressing root causes of racial housing inequities through policy reforms, reparative investments, and prevention strategies.
These measures require sustained commitment, resource allocation, and systemic reform to meaningfully tackle the deeply entrenched racial inequities within Canada’s housing system.
