In January 2021, the Canadian government announced a commitment to develop a National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. Leading up to the development of the Plan, we undertook consultations with community organizations and survivors on what they wanted to see in the Plan.

The report provides an overview of what we heard from consultations, including key messages and priorities for the Plan.

As we enter a third wave of the pandemic – what is showing to be the harshest wave yet – the provincial government must implement paid sick days.

Paid sick leave is a critical component of a pandemic response and yet, despite a call for paid sick leave from municipal governments and health authorities, the Ontario government has not implemented paid sick leave. Paid sick leave would help reduce the COVID-19 variant spread.

Paid sick leave is a gender issue. Women are less likely to have access to paid sick leave. Workers without paid sick leave are more likely to be in roles that are low paid and involve direct contact with others, like working in grocery stores, long-term care, or cleaning services. These roles are disproportionately held by women, particularly racialized women.

We cannot wait any longer to legislate paid sick days.

Take action now and tell the Ontario government you support paid sick days.

The Safe at Home project is working to advance survivors’ right to remain in their own home or independent housing when leaving an abusive relationship.

There is an expectation that women and their children should leave home when fleeing violence. As a result, survivors of intimate partner violence often face housing instability, homelessness, and significant life disruptions in areas like employment, service access, and social connections. These impacts are intensified by discriminatory housing and income policies that reinforce women’s economic insecurity, and norms that place housing responsibility on survivors.

The project will analyze housing, justice, and income policies and government funding priorities in order to facilitate survivors’ right to remain safely in their own home. It will also engage survivors and stakeholders to collaboratively develop policy recommendations and advocate for system change. To bring these changes into practice, the project will work to shift gender norms and attitudes through public awareness raising and organizational culture change.

This work will be informed by our previous research on Safe at Home housing models, including a literature review on program design and promising practices, primary research on survivors’ housing experiences and preferences, and a multi-sector stakeholder forum that captured opportunities and barriers for implementation.

Publications:

Safe at Home Community Conversation: What We Heard

Literature Review: Safe at Home

“A Place of My Own”: Survivors Perspectives on the Safe at Home Housing Model

Housing is a key barrier to fleeing violence. Survivors commonly face homelessness and housing insecurity. The portable housing benefit pilot program is a provincial initiative that provides survivors of domestic violence the option to choose a portable housing benefit instead of social housing.

This policy brief explores survivors’ experiences accessing the portable housing benefit. The brief makes recommendations to improve access to the program, increase housing options for women and increase awareness and knowledge of the program.

In September 2020, the government of Canada announced the new Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) to help address the urgent housing needs of vulnerable Canadians by rapidly creating new affordable housing. This letter in response urges the government to ensure the initiative is aligned with Canada’s National Housing Strategy. It also asks the government to recognize the disproportional barriers that women and their children fleeing intimate partner violence face in accessing housing.

Violence against women is one of the main causes of homelessness and housing instability among women and children, and the lack of access to safe and affordable housing is one of the leading barriers for women fleeing violence.

This policy brief explores of the role of women’s safety in realizing the right to housing in Canada. In preparation for this policy brief, WomanACT coordinated a consultation process on Canada’s proposed human-rights-based approach to housing with stakeholders providing violence against women services in the city of Toronto.

We recommend that the government considers safety as a component of adequate housing, applies an intersectional, gender-based analysis and engages women with lived experience of violence. We also recommend that the government explores the housing rights and options of women when fleeing violence, including the right to remain in their own homes.

From a public-policy perspective, violence against women will not be solved through a single targeted policy on violence. Public policies shape and create social conditions. Policies can create social conditions that reinforce gender inequality and produce violence against women. Policies can also negatively impact women experiencing violence by limiting women’s access to determinants of safety such as housing and income security.

This literature review presents an overview of the impacts of selected federal and provincial policies on violence against women. The literature review finds that women are regularly required to prove or verify their abuse in order to obtain support or services; that policies do not always reflect the gendered experience of immigration, poverty and homelessness; and that policies often reproduce conditions of women’s economic insecurity and financial dependence.

In 2016, the government of Canada started to pursue the development of a National Housing Strategy and welcomed feedback and input from community organizations across the country.

This report explores the importance of a National Housing Strategy that considers the experiences and needs of women experiencing violence. The report also makes clear recommendations for the strategy, with a focus on recognizing the importance of safe housing as a key component of adequate housing.

As cases of COVID-19 surge across the province, several regions have been placed in lockdown and Ontarians are being told to stay home in order to stay safe. Residential tenants cannot follow this advice if they are being evicted from their homes. Not all tenants face the same risk of eviction. Low-income and racialized women, survivors of domestic violence, and women-led households are disproportionately affected by evictions.

We are pleased to see Ontario MPPs vote unanimously in support of a motion for a residential evictions moratorium.

We are now calling on Premier Ford to immediately sign an emergency order that will reinstate the ban on evictions.