Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.
Kindred Works is a developer and manager that is creating a scalable, systems-based solution to the housing crisis and the climate crisis. We're unlocking the potential of some of the largest urban infill land banks in the country. Our goal is to build 20,000 new rental homes over the next 15 years. We currently have 18 projects and about 3,000 units in various stages of development. It's our aim to have one-third of our rental homes at below-market rent to meet core housing need. This is a measurement that allows housing affordability to be tailored to people's unique needs in their respective communities.
We all know that rents are increasing rapidly across Canada. This is caused by a lack of accessible, climate-friendly, affordable and purpose-built rental units to house our growing population. This issue disproportionately impacts Canada’s most vulnerable populations. It's also pricing working Canadians out of the communities where their skills are needed, threatening economic growth.
To provide enough housing units to accommodate individuals and families and to return housing costs to acceptable levels of affordability, we need, according to CMHC, 5.8 million new homes of all types before 2030. That is approximately tripling Canada’s historic homebuilding rate, and it requires trillions of dollars of investment. We know that government can't do this alone. We need to attract private capital and private investment with social responsibility.
Kindred Works is a participant in the national housing accord, which provides a framework for industry and government to address housing affordability, particularly recognizing the need to build two million new rental units by 2030. A key recommendation from this framework has been adopted—namely, eliminating the GST on purpose-built rentals. This will have a significant positive impact on bringing new supply forward and getting more shovels in the ground sooner, but this is offset by the higher interest rate environment, construction costs and labour costs.
I also want to highlight the importance of the continued availability of debt financing for new construction of rental housing. This can be supported by the federal government through either the national housing strategy or CMHC loan insurance programs. Ultimately, we need to think of housing, particularly rental housing, as infrastructure.
Programs such as the rental construction financing initiative, RCFI, have a meaningful impact on incentivizing new construction by providing low interest rate loans in exchange for a percentage of the units being at below-market rates. We see from our portfolio underwriting that when we use RCFI interest rates, we can deliver 20% to 30% of the units at below-market rents that meet core housing need, particularly for moderate-income working families or multi-person households that are increasingly being priced out.
We also see from our experience working with non-profits that to deepen affordability to meet low-income or the very low-income quartiles, all levels of government need to make substantial investment to fund these deeply affordable units. This can be done through capital grants, such as the co-investment program's forgivable loans. However, the inconsistency in the program criteria and the percentage of the forgivable loan limits its effectiveness. Overall, CMHC needs to do further work to streamline the approval process, and we recommend assessing affordability based on core housing need data.
I also want to raise environmental standards. At Kindred Works, we're committed to creating a carbon-neutral portfolio by 2030 because it's smart and necessary. However, CMHC programs and local step codes are inconsistent in their environmental requirements. This results in undue cost and complexity. We need simple, consistent and effective requirements, such as a single bar of entry to access federal funds.
In closing, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our perspective and ideas. The issue of housing is a shared responsibility, and we're committed to working with all levels of government and industry to tackle this crisis.
Thank you.