Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'm with the association as its policy and conference coordinator. I've been with the association for a few years. Prior to that, I worked for a long time for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, so housing is near and dear to my heart.
Our association has some 200 non-profit and co-op housing providers in the province of New Brunswick, who supply some 7,000 units of affordable housing to aboriginal and non-aboriginal families, seniors, and individuals with special needs.
We have just finished our annual conference here in Moncton on the weekend. Attendees included the provincial Minister of Social Development, CMHC, the president of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, and Elizabeth Weir from Energy Efficiency NB. These are all people who are active in the whole area of affordable housing. We had a very good discussion there.
Today's meeting follows very well from that discussion. We welcome the opportunity to discuss the important federal role in reducing poverty in Canada. We strongly advocate for a federal leadership role in this initiative.
We fully realize that it's a multi-faceted issue and requires a multi-pronged strategy, as we're dealing with a lot of issues, including income issues, housing affordability, and energy, poverty, health, education, and training issues. However, our main message today to the committee is that a federal strategy to reduce poverty must have as its central pillar an assurance that all Canadians have access to safe, secure, and affordable housing.
Quite simply, a lack of affordable housing is a major contributor to poverty, as many Canadians are paying more than 30% of their income on housing. In New Brunswick, there are 30,000 households that are paying more than 30% of their income on housing. There's an active waiting list for housing. The number is very high. It's at least 5,000. Maybe Phyllis can help me there. It's a huge number and it doesn't seem to be going down.
Also, the Human Development Council estimates that one in six children in New Brunswick is living in poverty, and there's a huge gap between low- and high-income families. There's another indication: a single parent in Fredericton needs to have almost two minimum wage salaries to afford a suitable apartment in Fredericton. Phyllis has made the point that rents are very high and people have problems accessing the market.
We've made this point consistently in our briefs to New Brunswick's self-sufficiency initiative and to the 2008 Senate Subcommittee on Cities. We made the same pitch to Senator Eggleton last year and also to the province's poverty reduction strategy.
We strongly subscribe to the “housing first” model, under which you have to provide a person with a roof over their head. Then they can take steps to become better-educated, healthier, better-employed, and,e eventually, more self-sufficient. We view affordable housing as sort of a gateway point for other service providers. Housing can help to achieve other social and economic objectives with this integrated policy response.
Our member groups are in the business of providing affordable housing. We look at the need numbers that are tracked through the census and we also look at the housing waiting list numbers. Those are the measures we are looking at.
Again, we see the federal government playing a leadership role in ending poverty. Also, a long-term affordable housing strategy has to be in place to buttress that effort, along with community input, because we need to have policies and programs that reflect community needs. this input has to be engaged.
In New Brunswick, we have some examples of the federal government partnering with other stakeholders. We have the federal-provincial affordable housing agreements. We have local homelessness partnering strategy action groups. Also, in Fredericton, we have an affordable housing committee in which all levels of government, the private sector, the aboriginal sector, and the service groups are engaged. We're trying to partner to find affordable housing solutions.
We are very happy that in the most recent federal budget funds were allocated to affordable housing and homelessness. We anxiously await the signing of the new agreement between CMHC and the Province of New Brunswick so we can get on with program delivery.
But again, some of the programs, especially the ones attached to the economic stimulus, have a short-term timeframe, so we need to get on with the delivery of the programs. Instead of having short-term program timelines, we strongly urge the federal government to have a longer-term vision in mind so that groups can operate more effectively over time.
One way in which we think federal funding can be increased further is to simply maintain the investment the federal government currently makes in existing social housing stock. As these agreements expire, the federal dollars are no longer required. The $2 billion should stay in place over time to ensure the long-term viability of the social housing stock and help create new units.
Another fact that should be highlighted is that affordable housing, with supports, can be a very cost-effective way of attacking poverty and homelessness. You can save up to 40% on costs compared to other responses to homelessness, such as hospitals, shelters, and jails.
This topic has been researched quite a few times. We were very impressed by the Senate report, “Poverty, Housing and Homelessness: Issues and Options”, which came out of the Senate subcommittee last year. We feel that we need to be more action-oriented. We need to get the programs moving and end poverty in Canada.