Canada’s affordable housing challenges won’t be solved by small adjustments alone. At BSH’s 2026 Spring Workshop, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners identified four core problems in the current policy landscape, along with directions for addressing them.
The first concerns who gets a seat at the table: housing policy processes still tend to exclude Indigenous leadership and disproportionately amplify NIMBY voices in land-use planning. Second is renter security, which is eroding as financialization gives large corporate landlords growing power with little obligation to maintain affordable, livable housing. The third is the risk to existing affordable stock, as financialized landlords continue to acquire affordable housing and public land. And fourth is the non-profit sector’s funding instability, which limits providers’ capacity to serve low-income communities over the long term.
As the federal government is expected to open consultations on a renewed National Housing Strategy (NHS 2.0), with national organizations already shaping what it should include, these recommendations represent findings from research and community partners from across the BSH network. Read the full report for more.
Read the Report
