Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the finance committee.
My name is Sahar Raza. I am the project manager of the National Right to Housing Network, a network of over 350 organizations and experts from across the housing and homelessness sector, including FRAPRU, which we heard from earlier today. We are all dedicated to seeing the meaningful implementation of the right to adequate housing, which Canada has committed to in both domestic and international law.
In fact, it was this very committee that adopted key amendments to the National Housing Strategy Act in 2019 in order to recognize adequate housing as a fundamental human right, so it really is an honour to be here today to discuss how we can turn that transformational human rights commitment into practical solutions that can actually address this housing crisis.
As we know, financialization is a major driver of the housing crisis, because housing is being treated as a profit-making commodity rather than a social good and human right. While increasing supply is certainly important, particularly in rural, remote and northern areas, supply alone will not get us out of this housing crisis. We are losing affordable housing stock at a faster rate than we can possibly produce it, and that means we need to revamp ineffective housing programs and policies to better utilize our current housing supply. We need to close tax loopholes and increase investments in non-market housing, for which our stock is about half that of other OECD and comparable countries.
For starters, we know that large corporate landlords, such as real estate investment trusts, are huge drivers of financialization. They are known for buying up affordable housing stock, “renovicting” low- and middle-income tenants, and then jacking up home prices, which makes housing even more unaffordable. Yet, in a recent study by ACORN Canada, it was estimated that just over the last 10 years these real estate investment trusts have benefited from more than $1.2 billion in tax exemptions, compared to if we were to just tax them like a normal corporation. If we look to international human rights guidelines, they actually tell us that we need to close these types of real estate loopholes and then reinvest that tax money in our national housing strategy. There's a huge opportunity here to simply use the tax money being left on the table to improve our housing supply, to repair our current homes and for programs for people in greatest housing need.
Along that vein, there's also an opportunity here to increase taxes on all private investments or investors who own multiple properties, because, as we've seen, existing homeowners and investors are seeing a major equity gain, which means that they are easily able to take that equity alongside low interest rates and buy even more investment properties or else pass that wealth on to their children, which makes it even more difficult for renters and first-time homebuyers to break into the market. We're even seeing disadvantaged groups experience that disadvantage multiplied generationally.
These are highly inequitable outcomes that violate the right to housing, but again, they can be easily addressed through regulatory and tax measures such as an incremental tax for each additional property beyond your primary residence, or through national speculation and vacancy taxes, all to disincentivize profit-hoarding in the housing market. Again, this money can be reinvested in our national housing strategy to improve supply and so on.
However, I will say now that our existing national housing strategy requires a major rights-based revamp, because its capital funds, like the rental construction financing initiative—which, by the way, holds the biggest price tag of all programs in the strategy—have extremely lenient and short-term affordability guidelines that simply do not target low-income households. Just to exemplify that, many NHS-funded projects are unaffordable for up to 90% of renters. This means that we are actually using government funds to drive the housing crisis instead of addressing the housing crisis.
This could easily be reformed if we just think of some new criteria for these capital funds. For example, we could require that a certain percentage of units be permanently affordable at rents geared to income for every new development. We can implement anti-displacement or anti-eviction regulations. We can implement rent controls. We can dedicate more funds from these capital initiatives to non-market housing.
I will end here, but these are just a few of the practical human rights-based solutions that we can implement today to ensure that every person in Canada has access to adequate and affordable housing, which I think is the goal that we all share here at this table.
Thank you for your time. I very much look forward to your questions.