I will start by acknowledging your depth of experience in this area and the many years you've put in on leading the national housing strategy and the incredible work that has been done to begin the process, the long process, of ending homelessness in Canada. Thank you for making time in your schedule to be here tonight.

I want to go back to something that Mr. Vis said, because he didn't give you the chance to respond and I think he drew a conclusion, perhaps, from something you said that wasn't intended by you. It had to do with the co-investment fund and the rapid housing initiative. Could you please clarify what you were about to say?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

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.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON

Thank you.

Just to really crisply clarify this, the rapid housing initiative is not addressing some inadequacy with the co-investment fund. It's actually targeting a different segment of the population, which is people with the most core housing need or maybe with the most complex needs.

Would you say that's true? Give just a brief answer, please.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

Yes. It's also for people who are being impacted by COVID differently because they don't have secure housing to isolate in.

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON

Thanks.

The rapid housing initiative in its very title suggests that we're expediting the process. I know from my past experience that these projects can often take many years to get under way. In this case, we're expediting that process.

Can you give an example of how fast the rapid housing initiative can really address people's needs who are in that core housing need category?

3:50 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

I can talk about Toronto most specifically because I've had a view to city council's work on it and the 540 units. They were part of the consultation process and had started to line up assets they were renting that they had options to purchase on. When rapid housing came in, they simply bought those units. The rent in those units went from almost $3,000 a month down to about $1,500 a month instead.

That has allowed the city to roll those savings into a further extension of programs and provision of service on site. It's been very much focused on those populations made vulnerable by COVID who have been subjected to decades of neglect around the absence of a supportive housing program. It set us up for much more success in the coming weeks and months.

The deployment of those dollars was virtually immediate. Within weeks of signing those agreements, cities were announcing the acquisition of assets and moving people in.

On a modular housing basis, it wasn't tied to rapid housing, but in the city of Toronto there was a six-month turnaround on two 60-unit projects from flat ground—from acquiring the property—to actually moving people in. It was done in less than six months.

That was done under the co-investment fund by coincidence, but it's the modular housing piece of this that is also showing great promise. It is also a very good economic development tool to set up these factories in remote parts of the country to develop the rural housing program that Mr. Vis talked about.

There have been some really good findings from this that have been drawn from the quickness, but also the nimbleness of our municipal partners.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON

Great. It sounds like it's also more cost effective based on the remarks that you made.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

It's much more cost effective.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON

I'll move to my last question here.

You mentioned that it was oversubscribed in both streams. It's split between $500 million for the cities initiative and then the rest of it was another $500 million. Do you consider the fact that it's oversubscribed a sign of success? How would you define the success of the rapid housing initiative?

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Would you be brief, Mr. Vaughan.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

We have extraordinary partners in the cities and in front- line services, and they have been waiting for this kind of program for a long time.

In the city of Saskatoon, for example, we've seen four applications come forward without the city being involved, and what's clear to us is that if we had gotten the city the money, those four projects would probably be under way.

One of the learnings from this is that we need to expand the direct relationship with cities in delivering these dollars, both because of the way that money can quickly arrive in those cities, and also in the way in it can be deployed more quickly.

That said, not every city is as strong as every other city. In some cities indigenous populations don't have a seat at the table, and in others they are leading the programs, like they are in Vancouver and Regina.

It is also showing us where Reaching Home as well as the national housing strategy have some limitations, but it's also showing us the reward of working with front-line services and cities directly to deliver support to the most vulnerable Canadians.

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Thank you, Mr. Vaughan and Mr. Turnbull.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes.

3:55 p.m.

Bloc

Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing as a witness, Mr. Vaughan.

I will focus on the $1-billion rapid housing initiative, the funding for which was provided in two streams. As you mentioned, the initiative is now finished.

Our committee's mandate is not really about understanding the objectives that brought about the initiative. Clearly, no one can say that $1 billion does not meet certain needs. When it comes to affordable and safe housing, you know as well as we do that all sectors face urgent needs. This is an attempt to meet those needs in the best possible way.

Instead, my questions will focus on the rational objectives behind how the large city stream's funding was allocated. If I understand correctly, the major determinants were the needs and the rate of homelessness.

For example, Quebec, with almost one-quarter of the population of Canada, has two projects under the large city stream: one for Montreal, and one for Quebec City. Other large cities with the same needs could have used the stream as well. The funding provided accounted for approximately 12% of the total amount. I agree with you; homelessness is not proportional to population size, but it still appears that some have been left behind.

Under what criteria did Quebec's two large cities receive only 12% of the funding?

3:55 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

The two major indicators...the gap between social assistance and the average market rent in major cities.

First, we looked at where housing needs were going to be the most exaggerated and, therefore, the most critical to address quickly to get people into shelter and to keep people safe. Therefore, if you're in a community with virtually no homelessness, the chances of scoring high on that were very low. If you have a city like Toronto where you have a homeless population of close to 9,000 people who are on the streets, in comparison with Montreal, where the point-in-time counts usually come back at just under 1,000, you're going to see a differential in the distribution of dollars based on the number of people who are expressing that need.

The second criterion we looked at was the point-in-time count, where we did the last round of counts across the country to understand exactly where the populations were centred. I have to give Quebec full credit here. Their housing program is one of the strongest in the country. B.C. gives them a good run for their money, but that's only been recently.

When you take a look at the point-in-time counts in Montreal and Quebec City and other major cities—Laval and Gatineau, for example—you see that they are much lower in total number, so the emergency need to push money immediately to keep people safe with housing was not as pronounced in Quebec as it was in other parts of the country. Hence, the resources were proportionalized in that way.

That being said, when we looked at the criteria, they still scored fairly high in the rankings—they're in the top of the second tier of the numbers. We wanted to see how they spent the money, how that money flowed through the Quebec housing accord, which was recently signed and which also sees this money transferred to Quebec and then to cities in a different way. We needed to see how the dollars were spent, how they addressed the population before we came back to rapid housing 2.0 to achieve our goal of eliminating homelessness everywhere.

That's the way it was formulated. We looked at a list of six, 10, 15 and 25 cities, and at what a project-by-project application would look like.

Before we get to the next wave of funding, we want to take the learnings from these fundings and adjust it based on observations like your own, where you said that it didn't work in these smaller communities and how do we address those? Is it through bulk funding, is it city-by-city funding, or is it a specific kind of funding that needs to be changed to deliver that kind of housing to smaller communities with smaller populations?

4 p.m.

Bloc

Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC

First of all, thank you for saying that Quebec has good programs. I agree with you.

I want to ask you about the answer you just gave. As we know, some cities have higher real estate markets. For example, Toronto and Montreal are two different worlds.

Is a city penalized based on the nature of its real estate market? If a city has a more successful real estate market, will it be penalized as a result?

There is also another stream: homelessness. We know the homelessness rates in Montreal and Quebec City, because they are large cities. Elsewhere, homelessness may be less visible, but that does not mean that it does not exist.

It is quite difficult to understand why only two cities in Quebec were able to use this program.

February 4th, 2021 / 4 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

There are two points in that.

First, it's very difficult to count invisible homelessness. It's been a challenge for the sector and it is an issue that we're concerned about. It also implies that these homeless are living somewhere, as opposed to living in parks and ravines or on the street. That's a very clear definitional difference that drove some of the funding as it was assigned to different cities.

Second, you're right that areas with extreme real estate conditions, such as Vancouver and Toronto in particular, are treated differently because the cost of living in those cities is massively different from other parts of the country. As a result, the housing needs are more likely to be more pronounced during COVID as circumstances roll out.

CMHC can explain the exact formula they use, but a calculation was made on the population facing core housing needs, and that drove part of where the dollars were assigned. That is part of the reason, particularly in smaller cities away from the major cities, even though there are invisible homelessness issues to be contended with. Indeed, rural homelessness is just as serious as urban homelessness, but the numbers aren't the same.

In focusing the projects, those communities are still eligible to apply to the project base, which may change Quebec's numbers, but the city allocations were driven by the numbers in the cities.

4 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sean Casey

Thank you, Mr. Vaughan.

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Ms. Gazan, you have six minutes, please.

4 p.m.

NDP

Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, MP Vaughan, for being on the hot seat today.

I know you're usually on committee, but here you are on the hot seat. I have some tough questions for you.

The most recent throne speech about the rapid housing initiative was recycled from the previous speech.

4 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

You mean the fall statement?

4 p.m.

NDP

Leah Gazan NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

Yes. But we still don't have adequate investment. I think you and I can both agree that the 3,000 units doesn't cut it. Now we have a mandate letter—another recycled announcement.

Communities like mine, as you know, where we work very closely, are in dire need. We're dealing with trench fever. That's extreme poverty, yet only 88 housing units were offered.

When are we going to see new money to deal with this housing crisis? I'm not talking about recycled announcements, but new money?

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON

Not being a minister, I'm a little less handcuffed by that question. I'm also a seat farther away from the table than I'd like to be in giving you a clear answer.

The commitment to end chronic homelessness that was made in the throne speech and then restated with clarity in the fall economic statement is a goal. What we're looking at there, and what we think we need to do there, is to get to about 50,000 units of supportive housing through a systems planning mechanism to achieve that goal. That's the target we have aimed at.

We have shelter capacity of 38,000. This is 3,000 and we need to get to the rest, and that's coming. We can't spend those dollars without parliamentary consent and that requires a budget. As soon as the budget lands, we'll have new dollars.