Published on May 5, 2021 by CBC News

A national housing non-profit group says they are ‘disappointed’ no money was allocated to them in the federal budget for a pan-northern housing strategy.

Jeff Morrison, the executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association (CHRA), said the association’s Indigenous housing caucus has been working on a strategy with representatives from all three territories for the last couple of years.

The work came out of what they call a ‘glaring’ omission of the specific needs of Indigenous peoples off-reserve in the 2017 National Housing Strategy.

Now that the federal government is thinking about the transition to post-pandemic life, Morrison said it would make sense for them to give more attention to a housing strategy by and for Indigenous people.

“This could’ve been such a fantastic opportunity to address housing for northern Canadians for the next 10, 20 years,” Morrison told CBC. “That really was a missed opportunity.”

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