Giving Compass' Take:

• Al Jazeera reports on a government plan in Canada to ensure all citizens have access to affordable housing, but a mass eviction situation in Ottawa may put such a policy to the test.

• What can we learn from the efforts in Canada to establish housing as a human right? Are the challenges our neighbors to the North face mirrored in the U.S.?

• Here's how various leaders are wrestling with the affordable housing crisis.

Last November, the [Canadian] federal government unveiled a 10-year, $31 billion ($40bn Canadian) National Housing — the first of its kind in Canada — to help ensure Canadians have access to affordable housing.

Among the program's main [goals] are cutting chronic homelessness by 50 percent, building 100,000 new housing units, repairing 300,000 others, and removing more than half a million households from the "housing need" category, which includes those living in inadequate or unaffordable housing.

The plan, which says it will take a "human rights-based approach to housing", also seeks to provide 300,000 households with a subsidy known as the Canada Housing Benefit, to help offset housing costs for low-income families.

It also sets aside over $12 billion ($15.9bn Canadian) to a National Housing Co-Investment Fund, to encourage property developers to build affordable housing, and pay for the upkeep of existing units. Over two-thirds of that money will be disbursed in the form of low-interest loans.

Michael Brewster, a spokesperson for Jean-Yves Duclos, the minister of families, children and social development, which includes housing, said the government is "going further than any previous government has gone on the issue of housing rights".

In an email, Brewster told Al Jazeera the government would introduce legislation this fall "that enshrines the rights-based approach to housing, and will ensure Canada maintains a national housing strategy in the future".

Read the full article about housing as a human right in Canada by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours at aljazeera.com.