Thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm especially pleased to see my own member of Parliament here. That must be a good omen.
I have to say that I love the open mike part of your format. I think it's a real improvement in the committee process. Congratulations on that.
My name is Thom Armstrong. I am the chief executive officer of the Co-operative Housing Federation of British Columbia. It is an honour for me to speak today, not only for the co-op housing sector but also for my colleagues at the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association and the Aboriginal Housing Management Association. Together we represent roughly 90,000 homes in the community housing sector province-wide.
In my remarks today, I'll pick up where our written submission to you left off. We all know that the housing affordability crisis in Canada is a complex problem that's been decades in the making, but Canada has been experiencing a rapid loss of affordable housing for far too long. Between 2016 and 2021 we lost more than 368,000 homes renting below $1,000 a month. That's 12 homes for every new non-profit home built in this country.
In the same period, rents went up 20% across the country, with B.C. and Ontario experiencing a 30% surge in rent. In consequence, one in every three Canadian renters is paying an unaffordable portion of their income on shelter, with 13% of them paying crisis-level rents at more than 50% of their income. This puts them just one bad break away from homelessness.
At the same time, evictions remain high. Recent reports indicate that the high rates of eviction are rarely tenants' fault. The data suggests that only one in 20 evictions were caused by late or non-payment of rent. Two in 10 were due to other reasons related to tenant behaviour, the balance being the consequence of what people now refer to as the “financialization” of housing.
High eviction rates paired with rising rents will inevitably increase the number of homeless in our communities. Indeed, a recent homeless count for metro Vancouver reported an increase of more than 30% over the last count. CMHC has estimated that, as a nation, we need 3.5 million more homes by 2030 than the housing industry is currently projected to build. That is just to return to 2003-04 affordability levels.
Now, since our submission, the federal government has taken some commendable action. Minister Fraser does seem determined to use the housing accelerator fund to directly influence municipal housing policy. While not universally popular with municipalities across the country, we do find it encouraging. We believe it has the potential to increase supply where it's needed most while reducing the cost of construction.
The waiver of GST on purpose-built rental construction, while long delayed, is very welcome and will reduce some of the upward pressure on rents. We hope to see further action to encourage more non-profit housing construction. I can tell you that through our own community land trust, in the last five developments, we built more than 550 homes before this exemption came into effect. We paid $5.2 million in GST to the federal government, which could have gone to reducing day one rents in non-profit housing developments. We don't have the profit margins to balance against those increases that a private sector developer would bring to the table.
We're also encouraged to see $20 billion in low-interest financing unlocked to encourage new rental construction, but I have to say that the deployment of that financing is taking far too long, or a lot longer than it should.
In closing, I'll just reiterate the four suggestions that we advanced in our written submission.
We urge the federal government, as an act of concrete reconciliation, to fund the implementation of the urban, rural and northern indigenous housing strategy that's been advanced by National Indigenous Collaborative Housing.
We urge you to protect existing rental housing and tenant affordability by creating a federal acquisition fund based on B.C.'s rental protection fund. I can tell you that, within the next three weeks, the B.C. rental protection fund will be announcing its first acquisitions. It will be protecting rents in the range of $750 to $1,200 a month for tenants in buildings that are 30 to 40 years old. It will create the seed of a new redevelopment and supply program. That's a model that could be retailed across the entire country.
We urge you to reduce the financial burden on non-profit and co-op housing providers even more by working with provinces and municipalities to refresh the tax regime for rental housing construction.
Finally, please launch the federal co-op housing program that was promised in the March 2022 federal budget. The funds are already allocated in CMHC's programs. All that needs to happen is for the program to get rolled out.
It's the responsibility of all levels of government in Canada to address the affordable housing crisis. The upcoming federal budget is an opportunity for the federal government to lead the way, and I look forward to the results of this conversation and many others.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.