(OTTAWA) If a single mom with a newborn gets in line for subsidized housing in Toronto today, her child may start high school before she gets it.
Average wait times for subsidized housing in Toronto range from eight to 15 years, depending on the unit requested, according to 2022 data from the city.
The housing shortage is so severe that the Canadian metropolis encourages people to consider subsidized housing “as a long-term project, not an immediate solution”.
Toronto is far from the only city facing such a housing shortage: the long wait times perfectly illustrate the disconnect between supply and demand across the country.
Non-profit housing and social housing are usually administered by non-profit organizations (NPOs) and cities, and aim to provide affordable rent to low-income people who struggle to afford rental market prices.
Housing expert Carolyn Whitzman believes the shortage of nonprofit housing dates back to the 1990s, when the federal government stopped investing in the sector.
“There was this kind of idea that the private sector would somehow provide housing for low-income people, but that was never true – and certainly not in Canada,” said Mrs. Whitzman.
Many experts refer to the 1990s as a period of fiscal austerity, when successive federal governments, Conservative and Liberal, attempted to contain deficits through controls, freezes or even program spending cuts.
Earlier this week, Housing Minister Sean Fraser told reporters that housing should not have been part of those cuts.
“For most of the past half century, federal governments — Liberal and Conservative, by the way — have walked away from providing affordable housing in this country,” he admitted in Burnaby, Columbia. British. “It should never have happened, but it did. »
The current Liberal government is trying to pick up the slate. But experts and community organizations maintain that the amounts currently allocated to affordable housing are a far cry from real needs.
Earlier this year, Scotiabank economist Rebekah Young recommended in a report doubling the stock of social housing in Canada. While this may seem ambitious, Ms. Young pointed out that this target would only bring Canada back to the average of comparable OECD countries.
According to 2021 census data, more than 10% of the population – 1.5 million people – were in “core housing need”. Meanwhile, social housing represents only 3.5% of the country’s total housing stock, or 655,000 dwellings.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a person is considered to be in “core housing need” when they must spend more than 30% of their pre-tax income on housing that meets “standards “acceptability” (quality, size or affordability).
“The moral case for urgently building Canada’s anemic social housing stock has never been stronger. The economic arguments are equally compelling,” concluded economist Young.
She also warned that if governments attempt to meet the needs of low-income households with various transfers, the cost of these benefits and programs will continue to rise if the underlying housing problem is not addressed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is trying to address this issue through its National Housing Strategy, hailed as the federal government’s return to housing.
Launched in 2017, the strategy committed more than $80 billion over 10 years to CMHC-administered programs, many aimed at increasing the supply of affordable housing.
By 2028, the strategy promises to halve homelessness, lift more than half a million families out of housing need, and build up to 160,000 homes. But the success of the program has been mixed so far.
Some of the strategy’s failures were highlighted in a report by the federal auditor general last fall. He revealed that despite the commitment to reduce homelessness by 50%, Ottawa does not really know exactly how many people are homeless.
Efforts to get affordable housing built faster have also not gone as planned. A document prepared by CMHC last fall shows that the majority of approved units had yet to be built, despite the program’s original goal of having most homes built within 12 months.
The CEO of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, a not-for-profit group working to advance social housing, agrees that this National Housing Strategy was an important step.
“That said, a lot has changed in the last five years,” said Ray Sullivan. Construction costs have increased a lot, interest rates are much higher, the need is much higher. »
One problem, Sullivan said, is that the Rapid Housing Initiative has rolled out year-over-year, providing little stability for affordable housing providers. And since interest rates and construction costs have risen, the sums initially invested are simply no longer sufficient.
For NPOs working in this sector, government funding is essential. But according to Jeff Neven, CEO of a Christian affordable housing charity, the National Strategy has become less generous.
“We have probably 25 projects right now that can’t go forward without federal funding, and there’s currently no pathway with current programs to move forward,” he confessed.
The Conservatives have not articulated a policy position specific to nonprofit housing. New Democrats, meanwhile, are urging the federal government to spend more money in this area. Housing measures were also included in the “support and confidence agreement” between the Liberals and the NDP.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has proposed creating an “affordable housing acquisition fund” to help community housing providers acquire rental properties on the market. A proposal well received by the community and by experts in public policy.
This week, the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, the Smart Prosperity Institute and REALPAC, a national real estate industry group, collaborated to release a report with recommendations on how to end homelessness. the national housing crisis.
Recommendations include creating an acquisition fund that would facilitate office-to-unit conversions, and help non-profit housing providers purchase existing rental housing projects and hotels.
In the end, many of these public policy proposals require much larger investments from the federal government.
Although the Liberals have hinted they will have more to say about housing over the next year, Sullivan of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association worries there is no enough money.
Over the past year, the federal government has signaled that it is trying to limit spending so as not to fuel inflation. The most recent budget was narrowly focused on investments in the green economy and health care, with very few new housing policies.
