Mr. Speaker, a recent report issued by Women's Shelters Canada has found that the crisis in affordable housing is impacting women's shelters across Canada and putting women's lives at risk. As the executive director of Women's Shelters Canada explained, “Since there's no affordable housing, women are staying in shelters longer...new women can't move in if women already in shelter have nowhere to go.”
The lack of affordable housing is so acute that half the women who are needing shelter are having to return to live with their abusers because they will otherwise become homeless. Access to affordable housing is a matter of life or death. Women's shelters are at capacity. There is nowhere to go. It does not have to be this way.
In Alberta, the Canada housing benefit for survivors of gender-based violence was announced in mid-April and ran out of funds in August. The federal government must step up and provide more funding to women's shelters, to the housing benefit program, to the building of transitional housing and to non-market and co-operative housing initiatives, in order to create real options for women who are at risk.