The rapid housing initiative is aimed squarely at chronically homeless and people with the highest acuity on the street and in the shelter system. They require not just deeper forms of subsidy to make the housing affordable for them, but also the supports to live in it.
The co-investment fund is about building out the below-market, non-profit side of the housing agenda, as well as some market rents to blend neighbourhoods because we're not looking to build single-demographic scaled buildings. We like mixed buildings. We think that's the better model for housing. That's what the housing sector, cities and communities have told us.
The goal of the co-investment fund is very different from the goal of the rapid housing initiative, but you need both to solve homelessness. People, as they heal, graduate into greater self-sufficiency. They graduate into different forms of housing as their families and incomes change and their health, quite frankly, is improved. We need to make sure that every single bead on this bracelet is connected to the string and that people have the ability to make choices based on their circumstances.
While I share the frustration about how slow it's been sometimes for some applications to get through, the co-investment is a critical part of building the full continuum of housing right from shelters in the street all the way to first-time home buyers. You need to make sure that every part of that system is proportionately addressed, regionalized and made local to cities based on population and demographic data to make sure that you're addressing the full spectrum of housing needs across the country.
You will not solve homelessness with just supportive housing. You also need co-op and social housing. You also need to get people who can afford to purchase out of rental housing, so affordable market rental housing doesn't back into the other systems. I would argue that the move to end homelessness, which is the minister's initiative in this term of Parliament, is profound, but it requires a very focused, very intentional investment into supportive housing. Rapid housing is the first major step in that direction in the history of the country.
As I said, we are already working on rapid housing 2.0 and looking at how we can embed those services more strongly to make it more successful.