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357The
Front Line Defence: Housing and Human Rights in the Time of COVID-19
in inadequate housing. It is impossible to physically distance while
sleeping on a mat in a homeless shelter. It is difficult to properly wash
your hands if you live under a water boil advisory on a First Nations
reserve. How can you “stay home” if you haven’t got one or if you
have aged out of your foster-care home? For these populations, absent
state intervention and support, the mantra of “stay home” serves as a
mockery more than a life-saving measure.
COVID-19 has laid bare the failure of Canadian governments
to effectively implement the right to housing. In this chapter, we
argue the pandemic presents Canada with the opportunity to revisit
our housing system to ensure housing for all, establish housing as
a human right, and reposition housing as a social good rather than
an asset or commodity. We explore how housing status has been
determinative of outcomes for three vulnerable populations during
the pandemic—people experiencing homelessness, survivors of inti-
mate partner violence (IPV), and low-income renters. The experiences
of these populations demonstrate the urgent need for a rights-based
approach to housing in Canada.
An Uneven Burden: Housing Status as Determinative
of Outcomes During COVID-19
Scholars, activists, and community leaders around the world have
emphasized that COVID-19 has illuminated and exacerbated pre-
existing inequities. This is vividly true with respect to housing, with
emerging evidence that those residing in poor neighbourhoods, over-
crowded or inadequate housing, or experiencing homelessness, are
more likely to contract COVID-19 and experience worse health out-
comes, including death.2 While many media campaigns have centred
on the message that “we’re all in this together,” it is clear that the
burden of COVID-19 is not shared evenly.
Thus the importance of the human right to adequate housing
becomes starkly visible. This right is codified in Article 11.1 of the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, defined
as “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself
2. See e.g. Dennis Culhane, et al, “Estimated Emergency and Observational/
Quarantine Capacity Need for the U.S. Homeless Population Related to COVID-
19 Exposure by County; Projected Hospitalizations, Intensive Care Units, and
Mortality” (27 March 2020), online (pdf): <endhomelessness.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/03/COVID-paper_clean-636pm.pdf>.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International