The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter delivered his report on Canada to the UN Council on Human Rights in Geneva on March 4. This report is commissioned by the United Nations to report on the right to food, and recommends measures that need to be taken at national and international levels that enable greater access to food.
The report makes a clear connection between the cost of housing and being able to access food, and acknowledges that “the cost of housing is a key reason people suffer from hunger and are compelled to food bank use”. The report also makes reference to Daily Bread’s Who’s Hungry report on page 11.
Key recommendations included revising social assistance levels to “correspond to the costs of basic necessities”, and “revise the system of housing benefits to ensure that the poorest families are not obliged to sacrifice food in order to pay for the non-compressible and non-divisible costs of housing” (p.20). The report also reiterated the recommendations made by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, “including the need for a comprehensive and coordinated national housing policy.” (p.12).
Daily Bread understands the connection between the cost of adequate housing and hunger, which is why we are pushing for the implementation of a housing benefit.
