Tawaak Housing Association is one of many Urban Native Housing Corporations that sprung up in most major Canadian cities since the early 1970's in response to a growing need for a separate Aboriginal housing program within the over all framework of the Canadian social housing delivery system. Given existing patterns of societal actions (discrimination and exclusion) coupled with the Aboriginal community's education and employment levels (lower than the non-Aboriginal population in both), was a recognition that the core housing needs of an urban Aboriginal population, migrating from rural areas and reserves, could be better served by separate and distinct Aboriginal housing groups.

Formed in 1981, Tawaak Housing Association is a private non-profit housing corporation that owns, operates and delivers socially assisted rental housing in six urban areas of Nova Scotia. The mandate of the housing corporation is to provide suitable, adequate and affordable housing to Aboriginal peoples of low to moderate income who reside in urban areas of the province, who cannot attain housing through the regular housing market. Assisted by both the Federal Government and the Government of Nova Scotia, Tawaak's portfolio consists of fifty-four properties comprising of one hundred and forty-five units supported under the Urban Native Housing Program and the Private non-profit housing program. Approximately eighty-two percent of the portfolio is located in the urban centers of Halifax and Dartmouth, while the remainder are located in Sydney, Truro, Antigonish, Liverpool and Bridgewater.