This blog is written by Dr. Sylvia Olsen as a special guest contributor to the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council’s Socio-Economic Gap series. Dr. Olsen has spent decades working alongside First Nations communities, researching and documenting Indigenous housing systems, policy failures, and lived realities. Her work brings deep historical knowledge and practical insight into how colonial policy has shaped the housing crisis faced by First Nations families today.

Years ago, one of my brother’s boys asked me, “Auntie, why are the houses on the reserve so shabby? Why don’t First Nations build better houses like people do everywhere else?” My nephew was a settler kid who lived in a modern subdivision home in Brentwood Bay, just north of Victoria. Around the same time, one of my First Nations nephews asked me, “Auntie, why are white people’s houses so much better than our houses? Why do they get so much more money than we do?” This nephew was a First Nations kid who had lived his whole life on a reserve near Ladysmith.

House belonging to Laura & Ernie Olsen – source: https://sylviaolsen.com/housing/

Neither one of them knew very much about the other. But one thing they knew was that First Nations houses were very different than white houses. My settler nephew thought First Nations people must be negligent, lazy, incompetent …something like that. Otherwise, he could see no reason why they didn’t have better houses. My First Nations nephew thought white people must get more money from the government. Otherwise, how did they get their fancy houses? Government distribution was the only way he knew that anyone could get a house.

Why is there such a difference between the quality of housing on Indian reserves in Canada and housing found in the rest of the country? It is an age-old question. Most Canadians have access to the basic information about the difference. 

People in First Nations communities are: 

• 7 times more likely to live in crowded housing and
• 6 times more likely to live in housing in need of major repairs than non-First Nations households
• 10 times more likely to die in a house fire than people living in the rest of Canada
• Almost 40% of people housed on the streets or in shelters in Vancouver and 33% in Victoria are Indigenous (Saskatoon, 90%, Winnipeg 66%)
• 54% of children housed in foster homes are Indigenous 
• More than 33% of people housed in jails are Indigenous (50% of the women) 

Note: Some of these housing statistics do not differentiate between First Nations, Metis and Inuit. However, a deeper dive into this information makes it clear that Inuit Canadians are the most poorly housed, followed by First Nations. Metis housing is generally of a much higher standard. 

The Assembly of First Nations estimates that First Nations need 157,000 new homes and that it will take $135.2B to bring First Nations housing to an acceptable standard.

Like my two nephews, Canadians, depending on where they are from, make up their own story to explain the difference. Their reasons are constructed through the housing lens with which they are familiar.

But the boys asked the right question: Not what the difference is, but why?

Why do housing conditions on reserves differ so much from the rest of Canada?

Housing is a complicated and complex problem. I don’t want to oversimplify the answer to the “Why?” question. But on one level, the answer can be explained with a short history lesson.

Almost one hundred years ago, during the time of the Great Depression, Canada had a housing crisis both on reserves and in the rest of the country. The problems in both populations were similar: crowding, poor building standards and limited access to financing opportunities for housing. However, Canada’s answer, in each case, was very different. Canada responded by creating two separate housing systems. One for the mainstream that was aimed at expanding access to housing finance, improving building standards and creating jobs in home construction to bolster the economy. 

The system was designed to create wealth and housing stability.

On reserves, Canada set in place a welfare housing system that was controlled by the Indian Department. Agents distributed enough materials to build tiny, rudimentary shacks (to people they deemed deserving)—delivered to reserves in bulk, leaving the decision of whose material was whose, and the responsibility of housing construction to individuals. At first, the welfare distributions were largely funded by the Band’s capital accounts –monies earned through the sale of land and resources. Later, after many First Nations’ capital accounts were dry, housing funding came from the federal government’s general welfare account. 

The system was designed to create poverty and housing instability.

W̱JOȽEȽP Circa 1912.

These two systems were not interchangeable. People couldn’t pick and choose what housing system best suited them. Some people want to make the story of First Nations housing about dependency. First Nations, they say, have become too dependent on government. The problem, however, is not dependency. Everyone in Canada is dependent on the housing system that the government created for them and enforces. The problem with First Nations housing is the system that First Nations were forced to depend upon.

The Reality of the On-Reserve Housing System

I was first introduced to the on-reserve housing system when I married and moved to Tsartlip First Nation in 1972. I was 17 years old. My husband and I had steady jobs. He had already had a mortgage and bought and sold a house off reserve. But he intended to raise his children at home, in Tsartlip, so we went about trying to build a house on the reserve. Like my settler nephew, I thought it would be easy.

I soon learned that the rules that applied to housing for settler people did not apply to First Nations people. I also learned that mainstream rules no longer applied to me. I would spend the next 5 decades working as a housing manager, teaching housing management, writing housing policies for First Nations across the country, sitting on provincial and national housing committees, working on building a new housing system, For-First-Nations-By-First-Nations, and studying the history of government housing programs on reserves in Canada. My work and studies in housing had an underlying goal: I needed to answer my personal question about my country. How could this be? How does a “good” country like Canada create a disastrous, racist housing system and then perpetuate the system for 80 years?

This may sound like ancient history, but it is not. On-reserve housing is not First Nations housing. It is government housing for First Nations people. It was that way eighty years ago, and it is still that way today. 

Significant changes have taken place in the past 20 years or so. Some First Nations are improving their housing conditions by investing their own-source revenue into new housing and repairs. Some have financial agreements with banks that allow individuals to access their own mortgage and build the house of their choice. Many First Nations have housing departments with policies, housing managers and maintenance crews to deliver housing services.

The sixth home built through Tsartlip’s Housing Initiative

That being said, by controlling funding, the federal government still controls housing on reserves. One failed program after another shared the same common theme—government control. 

• Welfare distribution in the 1940s – 50s
• Housing subsidy program in the 1960s (to the present)
• 1970s CMHC Social Housing programs
• Government-directed programs of the 90s to develop training, policy, community plans, and housing committees 
• 2000s programs for home ownership 
• 20-teens programs to build multi-family structures and fast-tracked modular housing

And now 

• First Nations organizations to take over delivering housing services are still controlled by government funding.

Again, there is a need for the question: Why?

This time, the answer is undeniable. From the start of this country, the government has believed that First Nations were incapable of managing themselves. It can also be said that by casting First Nations as incapable, the government gave itself the right to manage the “Indians,” their affairs and, ultimately, their land. 

The idea that First Nations needed government was infused in every aspect of the housing system. Blaming First Nations for each program failure justified the Indian Department’s implementation of more government control, and in so doing, dependency shifted. Now, not only were First Nations totally dependent on government for every aspect of their housing, but a huge government bureaucracy became dependent on its on-reserve housing delivery system—a system that was and is a complete failure. Yet, despite the failure, the government won’t let go.

Many people pass off the problem of housing on reserves as a predictable outcome of poverty.  Not true. The failure of government housing programs on reserves is directly responsible for First Nations poverty.

The history of housing on reserves is a blow-by-blow illustration of how housing has been an active agent in creating poverty and of devasting First Nations communities.

1. The 1876 Indian Act prevented Status Indians from borrowing money for housing on reserves, resulting in the absence of opportunity to house yourself and dependency on funding for housing.
2. Until the 1960s, housing funds came largely from Band capital accounts through the sale of lands and resources. These funds were controlled by the Indian Department (later funds came from government welfare). Many Band accounts were bled dry through paying for substandard houses that only lasted a few years.
3. Indian agents used the funds to distribute allotments of building materials—only enough to construct tiny, rudimentary shacks. The struggle over limited funds meant priority was given to the poorest of the poor.
4. Housing assistance determined who could live on the reserve. To qualify, you needed to prove your poverty. The process had the effect of selecting out the more prosperous members, often leaving reserve communities to their poorest people.
5. Because of the limit on building materials, builders on reserves only developed basic construction skills. Tarps became roofing, and tar paper became siding.
6. Government control of housing decisions, from leasing to renting to creating the housing designs, meant that reserve management suffered from housing illiteracy.
7. Mainstream Canadians became dependent on the system that had been developed for them—mortgages, building codes and the housing market. On-reserve citizens became dependent on the system-developed for them—government-controlled welfare funding and housing programs. Government bureaucracy became dependent on the First Nations housing industry.
8. Poor living conditions resulted in serious physical, social and mental health disorders such as depression, tuberculosis, asthma, addictions and family violence.
9. With no adequate place to bathe, prepare food or wash clothes, houses affected children’s ability to do their schoolwork and adults’ ability to be prepared to work.
10. The housing problem became a child welfare problem. Church and Indian agents and, later, social workers removed children from houses that were toxic and dangerous places. Families could not ‘get their children back’ until they could find adequate housing, when there was no housing to be found.
11. In the 1960s, the Indian Department downloaded housing program management, but little real decision-making power, to First Nations, causing internal conflict over housing issues. Some leaders used housing funding as a political tool.
12. The 1970s Social Housing Programs required bands to take on large mortgages (previously thought to be prohibited). These were the country’s most extraordinary examples of subprime mortgages. Bands were burdened with housing debt they could not repay, and they were unable to afford the management systems required to deliver the cumbersome programs.
13. Houses became constant reminders of government oppression and objects of contempt. Hostility was turned to the houses themselves. Places that were supposed to provide safety and pleasure became places of despair and discomfort—toxic places of shame.
14. Media used on-reserve housing conditions as the posterchild of the “Indian problem”, reinforcing negative stereotypes without educating Canadians on the reasons for the fiasco.
15. Lack of housing and substandard housing conditions on reserves drove First Nations people into cities and homelessness—alienated from their homelands and cultures.

Note: It is important to note here that despite the poor housing conditions and the limited options to acquire high-quality houses on reserves, many families made beloved homes out of their government-issue houses. 

This is not a story Canadians like to hear. We don’t like to see ourselves in this light. Up until recently, our governments have not been required to take any responsibility for the poverty and social disruption caused by the housing system that the Indian Department imposed on reserves. But if we are to grow up as a country, we must know our real history. If we are going to fix the housing problem, we need to have a full understanding of it…not only the what, but the why.  

Looking towards the future

So, we ask, from here to where? How can we achieve meaningful, long-lasting solutions? One thing we have learned is that government control of housing for a racially defined group of people does not work. Not in the past. Not now. Not ever. It follows that the only real solution is that First Nations take over care and control of their housing. This is, of course, more complicated to do than to say. 

The problem is not just who controls the system, but the system itself. Housing, on reserves has operated using beliefs and values of the mainstream…property, ownership, privacy, individualism, monetary wealth creation. First Nations housing values include communal spaces, sharing, ancestral connections, belonging, territory, family, land-based health. The risk of First Nations taking over care and control of housing is that the programs will be simply downloaded into First Nations’ hands without rebuilding the system. The work of the First Nations Health Authority  (FNHA) is an example for housing to use to see how deeply First Nations health values were inculcated into a new system in order to make First Nations health delivery truly different, not just the same government system with a different face. 

Secondly, the system did not fail solely because of the lack of funding. The system failed because it did not provide opportunities for First Nations individuals to house themselves in ways that did not include a program and government oversight. 

The Assembly of First Nations estimates an enormous cost to bring First Nations housing up to the standard expected in the rest of the country. But will building new housing stock fix the problem? My sense is that it is not enough to rebuild. Meaningful change requires government be held to account for perpetuating a housing system that inflicts harm on First Nations communities that echoes the destructive legacy of residential schools.  

Unlike with residential schools, up until 2025 no one challenged government. No one took the issue of housing to the courts. The government has maintained that it is “simply a funder” and that First Nations are 100% responsible for housing on reserves.

On December 5, 2025, Justice Paul Favel ruled on the class actions led by St. Theresa Point (Manitoba) and Sandy Lake (Ontario) First Nations and a companion case led by Shamattawa (Manitoba). His momentous ruling affirmed that Canada has a legal duty grounded in fiduciary obligations, common-law duty of care and Charter rights to provide adequate housing and safe drinking water on reserves. This ruling is not a funding issue. It is directed at the system that legally obstructs First Nations from housing themselves. The Court recognizes housing as an enforceable obligation, not a program subject to political whims.

First Nations leaders have been clear: the housing crisis is not of their making. It is the result of a government-controlled system that was not designed to provide adequate housing and that was chronically underfunded. The courts have now agreed that Canada is obligated to meet its duties regarding housing on reserves. The next step cannot be taken by the government. The solution must be a First Nations-led movement that demands the government fulfill its legal and treaty promises with resourced standards and the creation of an on-reserve housing system based on First Nations beliefs and values.

Part of making this change is changing the story. Canadians—the public, the governments and many Indigenous people have believed a lie. First Nations are not the problem. Not in the past and not now. Of course, First Nations are responsible for many of the housing problems they experience in the day-to-day activities and politics around delivering programs. But they are not responsible for the system they did not make, a system they never asked for, a system that was designed to destroy their communities, a system in which they had no opportunities other than what government set in place.

Urban Indigenous people are making great strides towards taking control over their housing. In 2022 government and Indigenous people created the National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Inc. (NICHI) The organization exists to “uphold and advance housing as a human right for all Indigenous Peoples living in urban, rural and northern communities from coast-to-coast-to coast.” NICHI is doing good work, but it does not directly address on-reserve housing. That work has yet to be done. It will require the same kind of collective collaboration—Chiefs and leaders coming together—as can be seen in NICHI and FNHA. Hopefully, a movement in that direction will be galvanized and propelled by Judge Favel’s historic ruling.

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