homelessness

Racist comments directed towards a British Columbia Indigenous community fighting a COVID-19 outbreak were denounced on Wednesday, January 13, 2021, by federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller.

Quebec's second opposition party is calling for people experiencing homelessness to be exempt from the government-imposed curfew.

Employment and Social Development Canada has announced it will conduct a national count of homeless Canadians in March and April. However, policy experts don’t see it as the right move during a pandemic.

With opioid deaths surging, the province’s decision to shut down the McCullough Centre in Gunn is just the latest example of the governing United Conservative Party’s callous disregard for the lives of people coping with addiction in Alberta, writes Susan Slade, a vice-president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

A new Canada-wide phone line aims to prevent deadly overdoses by connecting anyone who is alone and using drugs with peers who can quickly call for help if things take a bad turn.

Across the province, a growing distrust in the LTB’s processes means legal clinic lawyers are increasingly turning to the courts to handle urgent eviction matters amid a second wave of COVID-19 infections, according to multiple lawyers who spoke to Canada's National Observer.

A government-commissioned report says the effect of COVID-19 on the number of homeless people in Canada won't be felt for three to five years, giving policy-makers a chance to prevent the pandemic from putting people on the street.

Fifteen cities will share $500 million in federal funding so they can buy properties being sold because of the COVID-19 pandemic and use them to help keep people from becoming homeless.

Jenny Kwan, who represents the riding of Vancouver East, said she had started to notice that the housing situation in the city was not improving despite her Liberal counterparts saying the program was proceeding well during parliamentary sessions.

This week — after a marathon three-day session to hear from hundreds of speakers — Vancouver city councillors voted unanimously to “decriminalize poverty.”

When someone broke into her car earlier this month, Meenakshi Mannoe knew the potential consequences of calling police.

B.C.'s minimum wage bump is inadequate, especially as low wage workers suffer the greatest impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, says economist Iglika Ivanova, of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Grocery store workers, cleaners or people working in the restaurants or food service are at increased risk when they go to work. And when they earn such low wages, it’s profoundly unfair."

The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the need for more public toilets in communities across Canada, particularly as softening restrictions encourage people to spend more time outside their homes, advocates and experts say.

The federal government should consider rent relief for the precariously housed, or risk a wave of Canadians becoming homeless in the wake of COVID-19, advocates told MPs on Friday, April 17, 2020.

Faced with a White House-ordered ban on exports of key COVID-19 medical supplies to Canada and abroad, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying a more diplomatic approach with U.S. President Donald Trump, hoping to convince him such a ban will harm Americans and Canadians alike.