Building a Human-Rights and Youth-Centred Approach to Preventing Youth Evictions in Canada: Insights from a participatory action research project

Young adults are more likely than most other groups to experience eviction from rental housing in Canada; eviction impacts youth in particularly harmful ways, disrupting schooling and employment and negatively affecting mental health. Eviction can also lead to homelessness and long-term housing instability.

Notably, eviction into homelessness is considered a “gross violation” of international human rights law. Preventing youth evictions should therefore be high up on the agendas of policymakers and anyone who seeks to uphold the human right to housing in Canada.  Our research project, funded by Making the Shift, seeks to imagine transformed approaches to eviction and eviction legal systems that are rooted in commitments to prevention, human rights, and the perspectives and knowledge of youth. To this end, we held two workshops in Saskatoon and Toronto in the spring of 2024 to engage young people with lived experience of housing precarity, discrimination, and eviction about their ideas for how to transform current approaches.

Join us for this webinar as we introduce the research on the impacts of eviction on youth, discuss the human right to housing in the context of eviction, and share the recommendations for change shared by the youth participants in our workshops.