A/72/128 Children with disabilities are frequently hidden away and denied access to extended family, neighbours and other children. 11 13. When seeking both private and public housing, persons with disabilities face overt and indirect discrimination. Sometimes access to housing is denied because of an irrational fear that facilities will be contaminated. Income and employment status is used in many countries to vet prospective tenants such that well -paid, full-time workers without a disability are considered to be “qualified” for affordable rental housing, while persons with disabilities with lower incomes are denied access. People with psychosocial disabilities are often treated as unworthy tenants because of “abnormal” behaviour that is defined as “antisocial”. Persons wi th intellectual disabilities are also discriminated against on the basis of an assumed lack of capacity to take care of the premises and deprived of the legal capacity to sign rental agreements. 14. Discrimination is compounded by other grounds, notably se x, gender, socioeconomic status, race and belonging to ethnic, religious or linguistic minority groups. Indigenous peoples in Canada experience twice the rate of disability as the non-indigenous population and are subjected to intersecting discrimination o n the basis of indigeneity, poverty and disability. 12 Criminalization of persons with disabilities, in particular those living in homelessness and those with psychosocial disabilities, is common. A typical pattern for persons with psychosocial disabilities is first to lose their housing, when their needs are not accommodated or when they do not receive adequate financial assistance, then to be criminalized in the context of homelessness and then to be incarcerated. In prison, punitive responses for persons with psychosocial disabilities result in extended isolation, segregation, further deterioration of mental health and an ongoing cycle of homelessness and incarceration. 2. Institutionalization and deprivation of choice 15. Institutionalization is a clear example of how violations of the right to housing occur when disability is misconstrued as a medical condition. Removing persons with disabilities from the general population and subjecting them to isolation and extreme social control is rationalized on the basis that they are being provided with “treatment” or “care”. Institutionalization often combines the worst living conditions with severe deprivation of liberty and cruel and inhuman treatment, including physical and sexual abuse. Conditions are invar iably overcrowded, with limited or no access to sanitation and hygiene facilities, as has been documented in countries including Guatemala, Indonesia and Mexico. 13 Residents in institutions and institution-like settings are often precluded from having outside social or family relations and deprived of choices about activities, social relationships, sexuality and identity. Persons with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities are at highest risk of being institutionalized forcefully 14 and, outside formal institutions, are often __________________ 11 12 13 14 17-11724 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “Children and young people with disabilities”, fact sheet (May 2013), p. 23. Available from www.unicef.org/disabilities/files/ Factsheet_A5__Web_NEW.pdf. See the submission by a coalition of Canadian non-governmental organizations for the present report. A/71/310, paras. 25-26; case No. PM 370/12, patients at the Federico Mora Hospital, Guatemala; Human Rights Watch, “Living in hell: how people with mental health conditi ons in Indonesia are treated” (21 March 2016), available from www.hrw.org/report/2016/03/21/living-hell/abusesagainst-people-psychosocial-disabilities-indonesia; Disability Rights International, “No justice: torture, trafficking and segregation in Mexico” (Mexico City, 2015), available from www.driadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/Sin-Justicia-MexRep_21_Abr_english-1.pdf. A/HRC/28/37, para. 19. 7/23