To protect the existing affordable stock, the challenge we have with the affordable stock, particularly in Ontario, where we were able to create a number of units under bonusing with provincial rules, is that much of the housing that is below market rate will expire at some point in time. It may be 40 years, 30 years or 50 years—it depends on what it is—so we need to have the ability to create more.
Even with that market rate housing, one of the vulnerable pieces we found is that you can use certain tools that we used to have to create some level of affordability, but there is a depth between rent-geared-towards-income housing and slightly-below-market-rate housing, where there have to be other partners involved who are supported.
In London, the municipality is directly involved in builds now—one of them is in partnership with the federal government on Sylvan Street—because we know that we can't find a spot to produce those rents that are in that missing middle gap. Unfortunately, in a rising interest rate environment and when what people can afford is diminishing and their mortgages are coming due, there may be more people moving into that space. Supporting and creating that missing deeply affordable middle piece is important.
You want to ask how we protect it, but there's a gap there anyway, so it's a point of creation.
We've been very successful in using the rapid housing initiative money to try to create those. We'd always be happy to take more money, and a fourth and a fifth round would be great. It has helped municipalities to partner, but something that was said was that the market isn't going to produce it on its own. I don't think it's just protecting the ones that are expiring; it's creating that piece in the gap.