Housing for Aboriginal People Living with HIV/AIDS: A Review of the Relevant Literature

This article is a review of current literature detailing the issues facing aboriginal people across Canada who are identified as living with HIV/AIDS. The report reviews housing options available to Aboriginals in urban, sub-urban, reserve and remote living areas. The reviews are drawn from various governmental and community sources inlcuding private papers on the subject, Royal Commissions, and statistical data supplied by Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Department of Indian Affairs (DIA), the Canada Census, Statistics Canada 1992 and post-censural Aboriginal People's Survey (APS). A summary of the findings indicate that there is a tremendous shortage of housing available to all Aboriginal people in general; housing conditions are among the worst in Canada, education, prevention and care programs for the Aboriginal community needs to be holistic, culturally appropriate and delivered by the Aboriginal community and that there are currently little or no housing options directly related to housing issues of Aboriginal peoples with HIV/AIDS, and that there exist great obstacles in the provisioning and creation of such housing options; this fact impeded further by poor funding, funding freezes and several jurisdictional issues which impede the funnelling of any housing, health and AIDS care funding into Aboriginal communities.