Written by Gunreet Sethi, BSH Student supporting BCSTH with legal research on NOS.
Before I started law school, I worked on the frontline as a support worker, helping people navigate the search for social housing. I supported adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who were experiencing homelessness, addictions, intergenerational trauma, and violence. Much of my job was waiting with them. We would call BC Housing, hoping for news that a unit had opened, but often heard that nothing was available in the size a family needed. I knew the shortage was real, but I did not realize that some of the delay was built into the rules themselves.
Now, as I research the National Occupancy Standards (NOS) for the BC Society of Transition Houses, I am learning there are limitations built into the system. The NOS are guidelines from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that set out how many bedrooms a household should have, based on the number, age, gender, and relationships of those living together. BC Housing uses these guidelines to determine what size unit a family qualifies for, and this is where the delay becomes part of the policy. When larger units are scarce, these standards can make the wait even longer.
What really made me pause was realizing that the NOS were never based on evidence. The CMHC described them as reflecting “Canadian social norms,” which is an assumed cultural preference presented as a neutral fact. The standard defaults to a nuclear family. It does not fit multi-generational households, extended families, or many Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee families.
I know this from my own experience. For many years, I shared a bedroom with my sibling, which would not have been allowed under the National Occupancy Standards. There were six of us, and sometimes as many as nine, living together in a three-bedroom townhome. We never thought of it as overcrowding. In South Asian culture, joint families living together across generations is simply how a home works. It is a source of care and connection, not something that needs to be corrected. The idea of overcrowding is cultural rather than universal.
As I continued my research, I found troubling examples in case law. Over and over, a standard meant to protect families from overcrowding ended up being used against them. In one case, a housing provider fined a family $6,000 for having five people in one unit, and the tribunal had to remind everyone that the NOS are not the law. In another case, a single mother was not even allowed to view a one-bedroom because the standard prevents parents from sharing with their children.
That was when the pattern came into focus. These guidelines are not law, but they are often treated as if they were. Housing providers and co-ops use them to allocate units, declare people over-housed, and force families to move. After all the waiting, these standards can then be used to say that the home you finally found is not yours to keep.
This harm is not felt equally. In BCSTH’s research, 83 percent of women who faced NOS barriers identified as visible minorities. This highlights that those most affected by these standards are already navigating some of the greatest challenges in our housing system.
Since BC uses the NOS by choice, not by law, the province has the ability to make a change. Instead of applying an outdated and narrow understanding of what a home looks like, the province could let families assess their own needs. It could also work with Indigenous governments to develop flexible, regionally specific standards.
What I did not see on the frontline, I can now see in the case law. A guideline with no basis in evidence is shaping who gets housed and who stays housed, but it does not have to be this way. By listening to families and respecting diverse ways of living, we can move towards building an inclusive and supportive housing system.
The Balanced Supply of Housing (BSH) is a SSHRC-CMHC funded partnership grant led by Dr. Alexandra Flynn at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, focused on land use, housing financialization, and sustainable housing futures across Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
