Panel Overview

The City’s Housing Secretariat, in collaboration with community organizations that serve women and gender diverse people, will be hosting a National Housing Day Panel event, Taking Action on Housing for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence on November 21st from 2-4pm at the YWCA Auditorium (87 Elm St.).

This conversation is timely, and the momentum has started to build through Council’s declaration of Gender-Based Violence and Intimate Partner Violence an epidemic in Toronto. We also know that as of September 2024, approximately 41% of the over 12,200 people experiencing homelessness in Toronto are women and 1% are Two-Spirit, transgender or non-binary. Further, in a survey of 500 women and gender diverse people experiencing homelessness across Canada, 75% identified as survivors of gender-based violence. As the Federal Housing Advocate has noted, housing precarity is correlated with gender-based violence.

The event will feature a panel discussion with members of the Indigenous and non-profit sectors (see list of panelists, below), who are on the frontline of this issue, as well as advocates calling on all orders of government to address these intersecting challenges. The panel will be followed by a short networking reception, with time for attendees to connect and form new partnerships.

National Housing Day event – Panel Members

· Keynote Speaker: Patti Pettigrew, Executive Director, Thunder Woman Healing Lodge Society

· Moderator: Carla Neto, Executive Director, Women’s Habitat of Etobicoke and the co-chair of the Housing Pathways for Women and Gender Diverse People working group

· Priya Shastri, Director, WomanACT

· Martha Singh Jennings, Director, The 519

· Anna Morgan, Manager, Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter

We hope you can join us for this important National Housing Day event.

For more information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/taking-action-on-housing-for-survivors-of-gender-based-violence-tickets-1053386630769?aff=ebdssbdestsearch&keep_tld=1