Aboriginal People in Manitoba 2000Chapter 7 : Housing and Mobility |
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Home Ownership
With lower incomes, Aboriginal people have far lower rates of home ownership than non-Aboriginal people do. Where 77.6% of non-Aboriginal people in Manitoba reside in owner-occupied housing, the same is true of only 26.3% of Aboriginal people.1 Metis have the highest rate of home ownership among the Aboriginal groups: 49.7%, compared to 33.6% for non-Status Indians and just 13.9% for registered Indians.
Almost half of registered Indians live in Band housing, including 84% of the on-reserve population. Bands also house 53% of the 670 Metis and 27% of the 895 non-Aboriginal people who reside on reserve. 51% of non-Aboriginal people on reserve rent, and 21% own their homes.
Of the 79,510 Aboriginal people who live off reserve, including Winnipeg, 38% are homeowners and 62% renters. Again, this varies among the Aboriginal groups: 50% of Metis are homeowners as compared to only 24% of Status people. Metis in Winnipeg are more likely to be renters than their rural counterparts. 63% of Winnipeg Metis rent, as compared to 27% of non-Aboriginal Winnipeggers.
Only 16.7% of Status Indians in Winnipeg live in owner-occupied housing, and 83.3% rent. Therefore, the distribution of rental housing in Winnipeg along with its pricing largely determines the distribution of Status Indians in the city, leading to an ethnic “ghettoization” effect. To a lesser degree, this applies to Metis as well.
Off reserve in northern Manitoba, half of the Metis own and half rent. By contrast, in the south outside Winnipeg, 70.2% of Metis live in owner-occupied housing, which approaches the 84.7% figure for non-Aboriginal people in those areas. There is a similar north/south variation for Status people off reserve, although far fewer are homeowners: 29.3% in the north and 38.8% in the south outside Winnipeg.
