Tent Cities and Anti-Poverty Stigma: The Case for Social Condition

In December of 2019, Pivot Legal Society posted a backgrounder on ‘social condition’ explaining what social condition is and how its inclusion in the BC Human Rights Code would protect people who are living in poverty from discrimination and criminalization. Nearly 3 years later the provincial government has not taken action.

Advocacy for enshrining basic human rights protections in (colonial) legislation for people living in poverty, both in BC, and across the country, isn’t new. For several decades, anti-poverty advocates have been actively campaigning to have ‘social condition’ added into the Canadian Human Rights Act and the BC Human Rights Code (‘the Code’) as a protected characteristic against discrimination, the same way that a person’s age and ethnic background are currently protected.

For more information, please read our Anti-Stigma Campaigner, Nina Taghaddosi's, latest blog: