Thank you very much.
My name is Michael Shapcott. I'm with the Wellesley Institute. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I want to speak about another dimension of Canada's infrastructure, our housing infrastructure. I recognize that when housing is raised as an issue, there often tends to be a focus on house prices. As do members of this committee, I do talk regularly to various economists. I'm sure we could assemble a panel and have a lively discussion on whether or not there's a bubble and whether or not it's bursting, but I think that misses some important issues around the rest of Canada's housing infrastructure and some of the very serious issues being faced by Canadians because of housing challenges.
For instance, the latest national household survey reports that 3.3 million Canadian households spend 30% or more of their income on shelter, which is the threshold at which people, when they start to pay that much for shelter, have less money for food, medicine, child care, transportation, and other necessities. We know from the national household survey that 982,200 households, or about 7% of all households in Canada, are living in housing that's substandard, that's not fit for human habitation. We know that 6% of all households in Canada, 793,585 households, live in overcrowded housing, housing that is dangerous for the people living in it because of overcrowding.
Of course, housing is one of the most important factors for individuals in terms of their personal health and well-being. We know that. The research confirms that. It's also very important for the health and safety of communities and for the economic health of communities to have a good and diverse supply of housing.
The federal government was very helpful a couple of years ago in pointing out that affordable housing investments are actually one of the smartest investments a government could make. In the 2009 stimulus budget, when the federal government put in two years' worth of housing funding—$2 billion over two years—and then tracked that spending, they noted that the economic multiplier from that housing investment was as high as or higher than just about any of the other federal investments that were made. Roughly speaking, for every dollar the federal government invested, it achieved $1.50 in economic return.
For all sorts of good reasons, housing is a very important issue and needs to be part of the infrastructure discussion.
The observations we put in our written brief in the summer, when we submitted our brief to this committee, do note that the federal government has not been paying attention to the current needs of Canadians, in terms of the deteriorating housing infrastructure, especially since the recession of 2008. We've seen a flatlining of federal housing and homelessness investments, starting with the 2013 budget, when the federal government announced a five-year extension of both the federal homelessness program and the housing investment program but froze that spending at a time when, of course, we actually need more.
We've seen in the background that federal housing investments have been sharply declining since the 1990s—since 1996. Indeed, there have been some very dramatic reports from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which reports that federal housing program expenses reached a peak of $3 billion in 2010, when the federal stimulus budget was fully implemented, but by 2018 they're projected to be down by more than $1 billion to $1.9 billion. That's not just money that is being lost, but the decline in federal investments in housing means that the estimated number of households assisted by federal housing programs will also shrink at a time when there are growing housing needs across the country.
In 2010 the federal government reported that it was supporting 613,500 households. By 2018 the federal government says it will be supporting 452,300 households. That's a loss of 161,200 households, or a reduction of 26% in all federally funded affordable housing.