BC has a racial housing gap that colour-blind policy will never close

The roots of BC’s racial housing gap

In BC, Arab, Latin American and Black households face homeownership rates that are more than 30 percentage points below the provincial average and more than 35 percentage points below white households in the province (figure 1).

Because immigration has historically driven British Columbia’s racial diversity, it might seem plausible to attribute these racial housing disparities to immigration patterns—to assume that racialized newcomers simply require time to establish themselves in the housing market. However, this gap does not correct over time; even after three generations, Arab, Latin American and Black households remain significantly behind in homeownership (figure 2). And Indigenous communities face a 20-percentage-point gap compared to the average provincial population (see figure 1), despite their continuous presence on these lands. The persistence of these gaps across generations reflects a system built on structural exclusion, rather than a merit-based market that rewards time and effort.

The colonization of the region we call British Columbia depended on the dispossession of Indigenous peoples to acquire the land on the one hand, and the suppression of racialized workers to industrialize it on the other. Consequently, land ownership—and by extension homeownership—has been a dominant mechanism to building wealth in BC, a mechanism that systematically excluded Indigenous and racialized populations from the start.

From genocide, to ethnic cleansing, to the establishment of reserves and subsequent theft of reserve land, to the Indian Act, Indigenous populations have been continuously forcefully removed from their own lands and prevented from exercising authority over their housing.¹

BC joined Confederation in 1871 on the agreement that, as Lu’ma Native Housing Society puts it, “as a province it did not have to respect Indigenous rights.”² The legislature moved at once to entrench settler control, “prohibiting First Nations and Chinese Canadians from voting in 1872, leaving a minority of ten thousand white settlers to dominate the estimated forty thousand Indigenous and Chinese people then in the province.³ An 1875 agreement held that “any land taken off a Reserve shall revert to the Province,” so “to the extent Indians could be persuaded to unsettle reserves, it was British Columbia that benefited” and by 1911 the federal government had passed legislation letting provincial authorities wrest away the urban reserve land that newcomers coveted.⁴

Racial exclusions were formally embedded into property titles to bar sale to or occupancy by Asian, Black or Indigenous people. The earliest documented example of these restrictive covenants appeared in Port Alberni in 1909, and the practice became widespread in the 1930s across neighbourhoods developed by the Guinness family–led British Pacific Properties.⁵ One of these British Properties titles was found to still carry a racial restriction as recently as 2014.⁶

Vancouver’s first city plan was written by a segregationist who in 1931 zoned Hogan’s Alley, the city’s Black neighbourhood, as industrial, cutting off mortgage and repair financing and devaluing Black-owned homes.⁷ The city then withheld permits, cut services and froze property values before designating the Black block “First Priority” for clearance and driving the viaducts “directly through the heart of Hogan’s Alley.”⁸ The city razed the community by the early 1970s.

These recent histories, compounded by a continuing reliance on devalued racialized immigrant labour and a racial hierarchy of immigration pathways, produced and reproduce the homeownership gaps we continue to see today.⁹ The current housing affordability crisis in BC, driven by decades of stagnant wages and a disproportionate surge in real estate prices fueled by the hyper-financialization of housing, will only entrench these disparities. As existing housing wealth is transferred intergenerationally from parents to their children, those whose families are excluded will continue to be locked out of the market, reproducing the racial gaps we see today.¹⁰

Uneven precarity in BC’s rental market

Because they are less likely to be homeowners, racialized and Indigenous households depend on the rental market to a disproportionate degree. Our report found that, across the country, they are more likely to face discrimination and precarity in this market—and BC is no exception.

In a recent BC survey, 72% of Indigenous families with children reported facing discrimination from landlords when seeking rental housing, twice the rate of discrimination families in BC report on average (36%).¹¹ The Hogan’s Alley Society has found that 60% of Black renters surveyed in Metro Vancouver report experiencing housing discrimination and, among those who faced discrimination, 80% of them cited race as the main cause.¹²

Renters are overall more likely to experience core housing need—with either unaffordable housing, inadequate housing, and/or housing in disrepair—but racialized and Indigenous renters in BC disproportionately face core housing need (figure 3). Arab, Korean and West Asian renters face core housing need that’s nearly double what white renters in BC experience.

Among renter households, 46% of Arab and 44% of South Asian families occupy units too small under the National Occupancy Standard, against only 10% of white renters; 53% of Korean and 49% of West Asian renter households spend a third or more of their income on shelter compared with only 32% of white renters; and Indigenous renters have the highest rate of homes needing major repairs in the province at 15% compared to 8% of white renters (figure 4).

Housing insecurity is worsening as the loss of affordable units continues to outpace new development. For example, Metro Vancouver loses more than 10,000 affordable units each year.¹³ Although the growing number of condominiums and secondary suites has helped to address the short supply of housing, these property types are also particularly vulnerable to investor speculation and conversion into short-term rentals like Airbnb.¹⁴ This dynamic ultimately exacerbates housing insecurity among marginalized renters.

BC’s “eviction economy”

Renters in BC live in particular precarity as they face an “eviction economy”: a system in which investors profit from displacement.¹⁵ BC leads the country in evictions, with tenants facing no-fault evictions at a rate 30% higher than the national average.¹⁶ The Residential Tenancy Act enables this dynamic by tying rent control to the tenancy rather than the physical unit.¹⁷ A legacy of the vacancy de-control policies introduced in the late 70s and 80s, this policy incentivizes tenant turnover and bad-faith evictions by turning long-term renters into obstacles for profit; a landlord would need to apply the maximum allowable rent increase for 11 consecutive years to match the immediate financial gain of a single unit turnover.¹⁸

“Indigenous people also face disproportionate rates of overall eviction and eviction into homelessness. The five-year eviction rate is 10.4% for Indigenous renters compared to 6.2% for non-Indigenous renters.”

—Aboriginal Housing Management Association. British Columbia Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy: December 2024

Forty-five percent of Indigenous renters surveyed in BC who had experienced an eviction had not found a place to live after being evicted.¹⁹ In the 2025 Greater Vancouver homeless count, 42% of respondents said an eviction started their current experience of homelessness.²⁰

Statistics on the most visible forms of homelessness illustrate the staggering racial disparity among the population of unhoused people. Indigenous respondents accounted for 34% of the 2025 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count against 2% of the population, a disparity that has remained consistent since at least 2005.²¹ Across the province, “Indigenous people represented 40% of people surveyed through the Homeless Counts. This number has climbed to over 80% in some Northern communities. This compared to 4.9% of BC’s total population who identify as Indigenous, based on the 2021 Census.”²² Black people made up 6% of those counted as homeless while making up 1.2% of BC’s population.²³

Equity-based policy is policy that addresses the root of inequality

Housing policy cannot ignore race because the housing system, in practice, does not ignore race. Systemic racism and historical displacement have created profound and ongoing disparities in housing outcomes. Across British Columbia, Indigenous and racialized communities—particularly Black, Latin American and Arab populations—are significantly less likely to own a home and significantly more likely to experience core housing need, evictions and homelessness. 

A recent review of 39 municipal planning and housing strategies across the province found that only three reference the ongoing impacts of colonialism, and municipalities currently face no requirement to include Indigenous-specific data in their housing needs reports.²⁴ As one city planner put it, “when we look at housing needs we evaluate based on demographics but not race or ethnicity. We look at global needs rather than the needs of subgroups.”²⁵

But urban planning and government policies actively displaced these groups all while prioritizing white settler wealth and expansion. When modern housing policies ignore race by adopting a “colourblind” or supposedly “neutral” approach, they fail to address these deeply entrenched structural barriers. Such race-neutral strategies actually mistakenly assume a “white normative” experience, effectively masking ongoing discrimination by landlords, sustaining racial segregation and ignoring the distinct socio-economic vulnerabilities of marginalized groups.

Conversely, viewing housing policy through an equity lens allows for the development of just, reparative and effective solutions. Substantive equity recognizes that equal treatment is insufficient when marginalized groups face systemic barriers; instead, different groups require tailored resources to achieve equitable outcomes. 

For Indigenous peoples, an equity lens means the rematriation of stolen land, respecting Indigenous sovereignty and championing “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” (FIBI) housing strategies that incorporate cultural safety and wrap-around supports, and are premised on self-determination.²⁶ For Black, Latin American, Arab and other racialized communities, an equity framework enables community-driven building of social and economic capital such as through community land trusts (CLTs). 

Ultimately, equitable housing policy explicitly addresses racism, dismantles exclusionary planning practices and shifts decision-making power to the marginalized communities who have been most harmed by racial capitalism.

For more detail on these race-conscious housing solutions, please read our full report, and refer to the work of these organizations committed to improving access to housing for Indigenous, racialized and equity-seeking groups: 

• Aboriginal Housing Management Association (AHMA)
• Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS)
• BC Assembly of First Nations (BCAFN)
• BC Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA)
• The Hogan’s Alley Society (HAS)
• Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC)