Can Data Chart a Right?
Through rigorous research and community partnerships, the Balanced Supply of Housing (BSH) positions housing at the intersection of public policy and constitutional rights. BSH is a collaborative network of academic researchers and community partners dedicated to fostering a just and equitable housing system through evidence-based research and knowledge mobilization. Its mission is to “inform policy and systemic changes to address socio-economic and racial inequities so that the right to housing is realized and everyone is housed well.”
This framing is critical: it places the right to housing at the heart of housing policy, linking data-driven insights about supply and affordability to Canada’s broader legal and constitutional commitments.
Legal Definitions
The “right to housing” has a defined legal foundation. Internationally, it has been recognized for decades as part of the right to an adequate standard of living under Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Canada is a party. This right includes security of tenure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, and cultural adequacy. In Canada, the National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA), adopted in 2019, enshrines a national housing policy that “recognizes that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law.” The NHSA commits the federal government to the “progressive realization” of this right, meaning that governments must take deliberate, targeted steps to ensure all Canadians can access adequate housing. This represents a significant normative shift from understanding housing solely within a policy lens to housing as a human right.
The Canadian Context
Yet, unlike some countries, Canada does not explicitly constitutionalize the right to housing. Neither the Constitution Act, 1982, nor the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms include housing as a standalone right or government obligations. However, several Charter provisions—particularly section 7, which guarantees the right to life, liberty, and security of the person—has been used by the courts to guarantee basic minimum protections for unhoused people. BSH data has shown that inadequate housing, weak eviction protections, and homelessness disproportionately affect marginalized groups, raising equality concerns. Although Canadian courts have, thus far, been cautious to recognize a positive obligation for governments to provide housing, the Charter and the NHSA nonetheless offer a constitutional vocabulary through which the harms of housing deprivation can be framed.
Seeking Balance in the Housing Supply
Within this landscape, the work of BSH dovetails directly with the right to housing agenda by addressing the systemic conditions that determine who gets housed and how. BSH’s research on land use, housing financialization, zoning, and evictions goes to the heart of the structural realization of housing rights. A rights-based approach to housing cannot succeed without adequate and appropriate supply and protections; conversely, a purely supply-driven approach risks reproducing inequities if it ignores affordability, tenure security, and inclusion. BSH’s emphasis on “balance”—meaning between types of housing, tenures, and levels of affordability—captures this important empirical foundation of the right to housing.
Offering Housing Insight Grounded in Data
BSH’s work also mirrors the obligations embedded in the international human rights obligations that form the basis of the NHSA. Governments must refrain from actions that undermine housing security, and take proactive, coordinated steps to ensure availability, affordability, and adequacy. For example, BSH offers tools like its extensive policy database, which housing-related policy interventions. It offers a comprehensive series on creating community land trusts, with examples from across the country. Our eviction research compares legislation across the country and offers data on where regulation falls short of protecting renters, evident in the extremely high levels of no-fault evictions. In short, BSH’s comparative and data-driven approach supports the kind of evidence-based policymaking that international human rights bodies urge states to adopt.
Working in Solidarity toward the Right to Housing
Still, the Canadian experience highlights the tension between policy recognition and legal enforceability. The NHSA, while groundbreaking in its human-rights framing, does not create an individually enforceable right to housing. Instead, it establishes mechanisms for accountability, such as the Federal Housing Advocate and the National Housing Council, designed to ensure that systemic issues are investigated and policy recommendations are made. BSH fully supports these forums, offering research and testimony to bolster data and recommendations.
Rights do not exist in abstraction: they must be grounded in the social, economic, and institutional systems that make their realization possible. BSH’s work is guided by a more just and sustainable housing ecosystem that gives substantive effect to the human right to housing. BSH shows the structural causes of housing inequity—land scarcity, speculative investment, exclusionary zoning, weak tenancy protections, and financialization—and identifies promising solutions like community land trusts, Indigenous-led housing, and evictions protections.
The constitutionalization of housing rights in Canada may remain aspirational, but BSH’s work helps chart the path forward. The right to housing provides the framing for our work—one report, podcast, event, and blog post at a time.
The Balanced Supply of Housing is a SSHRC-CMHC funded, community-based research project at UBC that focuses on land use and housing financialization across Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
