A \u0027human right to housing\u0027 won\u0027t build a single apartment building, transitional housing facility or homeless shelter
Furthermore, Valente concluded based on cross-examination of city witnesses, Waterloo got cute in arguing there was plenty of space in Kitchener’s shelter system. It counted beds that are reserved for certain individuals and not walk-ins, beds in units that are under repair, beds reserved for people with COVID-19, and beds that are only available to women, youth, families and people with certain medical conditions.
Whatever municipalities’ legal and moral obligations are to the homeless, they have an inescapable obligation to face reality: If there’s nowhere indoors that homeless people are able or willing to spend the night, they’re just going to find somewhere else outside. It’s not as if that’s an irrational decision. Homeless shelters are miserable places. A man’s home is his castle, even it’s made of canvas.
“It is declared to be the housing policy of the Government of Canada to recognize that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law,” the 2019 National Housing Strategy Act declares.
Real estate is real estate. It costs a fortune nowadays no matter what you want to do with it, and there’s fierce competition for it. The “gatekeepers” standing in the way of bog-standard residential developments are fearsome enough. Try to put new shelter beds or transitional housing where people think it doesn’t belong — i.e., anywhere that other people live — and the gatekeepers are downright terrifying.
Everyone wishes there was some end-run play, some shortcut, we could use to make things better. There isn’t. Waterloo Region is no better off for going to court than it was before. And declaring a “human right to housing” when no such thing exists in reality, and won’t for many decades at least, does nothing so much as mock the human rights we do actually enjoy.
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