Bonjour, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
I'm coming to you from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations and now home to many diverse first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
As Canada's only national affordable home ownership provider, Habitat Canada and our 50 local Habitats partner with homeowners, volunteers, donors and governments to help families living with low incomes, including indigenous families on and off traditional territories, to build strength, stability and independence through affordable home ownership.
Habitat families buy their homes and make mortgage payments that don't exceed 30% of their income. Even with mortgages, they build equity that helps them educate their kids, start businesses and weather storms like COVID-19.
Housing is so much more than bricks and mortar. Investing in it creates safe and resilient communities and will boost jobs and our economy so that we can build back better. According to the FCM, every billion dollars invested in housing generates $1.5 billion in economic growth.
COVID-19 has made us all keenly aware that home ownership matters for every social determinant of health: shelter, health, security, stability and work. Home ownership lifts families and helps them build bright futures for themselves and their children.
In Canada, home ownership is the single greatest enabler of multigenerational economic advancement. Almost 70% of white Canadian families own their homes, but only 30% of Black families. We must democratize the pathways to home ownership and wealth creation. If we don't, we are cementing the barriers to racial and economic equality.
Our desire to do much more is why Habitat partnered with CMHC through the national housing co-investment fund. We're leveraging close to $36 million in forgivable loans to create more than 400 new affordable homes. We're delivering well on our three-year commitment, creating homes all over Canada in communities from Whitehorse to Mission, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Montreal and the Lennox Island first nation in P.E.I., with more builds coming this year. Most of the families benefiting face multiple barriers to home ownership, and 35% are single mothers.
Habitat's record is why last December we were chosen to create housing for Black families in another federal government project. Its $20-million commitment will help Habitat build 200 more new homes across Canada. All told, we plan to deliver over 600 new affordable homes to families in need with this critical co-investment funding.
Knowing the value of the co-investment fund, we were really pleased to see budget 2021 move almost a billion dollars forward into it for the next two years. This additional investment is well timed to support recovery efforts, but to activate it, the government needs partners like Habitat. We've proven that we leverage government contributions to attract more funding from other donors and make affordable homes a reality for families who need them.
We are proud to have delivered and proud that other charities are now being referred to us to discuss our successful participation in the co-investment fund. This is good, because when it comes to improving housing access and affordability, the charitable sector is a key contributor, and we can be counted on to recycle investments into more and more new homes.
We're ready to continue scaling our contribution, but we need the government to partner with us by continuing to invest alongside us, our donors and the low-income families we serve, as it does so well through the co-investment fund. We are currently working to renew our agreement with CMHC. We've tooled our Habitat federation to execute well and to grow our impact through the co-investment fund. We want to again stress the importance of adding to that fund through the proposed budget, because it will allow the government to to invest together with families, donors and charities across Canada to create affordable housing that will not happen otherwise.
Government investments in affordable housing are essential, and a loan is not an investment. If we were commercial developers flipping homes and taking out our profits every few years, a loan might be just fine, but we are investing in the long-term future of families and the long-term supply of the affordable housing stock they need. We and other charities and not-for-profits need more than a borrower-lender relationship. We need government to be a true partner, one that will leverage our resources and vice versa for the benefit of families.
We appreciate the strong working relationship we've built with Romy Bowers and her team at CMHC, and hope very much to renew our partnership on terms that make sense for the families we serve and want to serve.
In the meantime, we urge you to support continued investment in the national housing strategy and in organizations like ours that are here to help.
Thank you.