Good afternoon, everyone. I will be giving my presentation in French.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.
We know that the increase in housing costs is an important component of current inflation. We are particularly concerned about the plight of renters, who are the most heavily represented among households already spending too much of their income on housing. In the last census before the pandemic, 795,000 renter households in Canada were spending more than 50% of their income on housing, far from the 30% standard. In Quebec, 195,000 renter households were in this situation.
Because the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain, or FRAPRU, is a pan-Quebec grouping of 140 organizations supporting its mission to defend the right to housing, I'm going to talk about rising rents in Quebec, being well aware that tenants in other provinces are experiencing similar problems.
According to data from CMHC, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reports, in 10 years, the average rent has risen by 31% in Quebec, and it has risen by 18.7% in the last five years. The increase in the average rent is therefore meteoric. The shortage of rental units obviously has an impact on rental prices, but real estate speculation, which has increased in some regions during the pandemic, is also contributing to this significant increase.
Vacancy rates are plummeting in several regions. In several smaller cities outside of the major centres, rents have been cheaper until now, but in recent months there have been significant increases in rental costs. These include Rimouski, Drummondville, St‑Hyacinthe, Trois-Rivières and Sherbrooke, to name just a few. Available housing in these areas is extremely expensive.
One figure is very striking. In its latest report on the rental market, CMHC noted a 46% gap between a rented two-bedroom unit and an equivalent available unit. So available housing is 46% more expensive, leaving very few alternatives for tenant households who are forced to move, for example because of separation or because women are fleeing domestic violence, or because tenants are being driven out by often fraudulent evictions, which I will discuss again. This has particular consequences for low and moderate-income households, who are predominantly tenants.
According to Statistics Canada, the median income of these renter households, who are in core housing need, was only $18,000 in Quebec at the last census, and $24,775 in the rest of Canada. This is the income of renter households in core housing need. There are 1.2 million of them in Canada. It is their plight that should be of primary concern when considering the rising cost of rent.
We must also be concerned about the impoverishment of lower middle class renters; their incomes also do not allow for home ownership, and they will increasingly be among the households that spend more than the standard 30% of their income on housing—they need alternatives.
However, first and foremost, we need to focus on those low and moderate-income households that have absolutely no room to manoeuvre and increasingly need to turn to food banks to make ends meet after paying their rent. With inflation and recent rent increases, which will certainly have worsened the situation and will add to the numbers in the next census, this is an issue that absolutely must be addressed.
Ottawa has an important role to play. The federal government has a central role to play in ensuring that there are alternatives for all of these households, which currently have none. In the past, the federal government has played a role in funding non-private-market social housing in the form of co‑ops, non-profits, and low-income housing we call HLMs. The government's withdrawal from long-term funding has left a significant hole. Unfortunately, the partial return of the federal government through the national housing strategy has not produced the desired results, because this strategy relies too heavily on the private sector, and the initiatives funded by this strategy focus too heavily on affordable housing without dedicating money exclusively to social housing, as had been the case in the past.
At this time, the housing funded by several national housing strategy initiatives results in housing that is absolutely unaffordable for those households in core housing need. This also contributes to the rise in housing costs.
In our view, it is not by subsidizing the construction of rental housing by the private market, whose mission is to make a profit, that the federal government will help to end the current inflationary spiral. This objective would be much better achieved by introducing social and community housing projects and by allocating the money currently spent on housing affordability exclusively to non-private-market housing.
According to the latest report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, $3.3 billion per year is currently allocated to housing affordability. We believe that all of this money should be used to fund non-private-market initiatives and to fund social housing. Yet, at the moment, only one federal initiative is dedicated exclusively to non-private-market housing, the rapid housing initiative.
I thank you very much for your attention.
I would like to mention that we are members of the National Right to Housing Network. Finally, since I did not have time to speak about housing rights issues, I would like to say that I support what my colleague, Ms. Raza, will say later.