Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, now, to all of my colleagues. Certainly I want to thank Ms. Bowers and other officials at CMHC for coming in and giving us answers to our questions with respect to the very exciting rapid housing initiative.
Housing is a human right. I'm proud that our government has entrenched the recognition of this right into law through the National Housing Strategy Act. I'm also proud that we have made historic commitments to help implement that right through our $55 billion national housing strategy.
We still have a lot of work and a lot of catch-up to do to ensure that this right is upheld for all Canadians and the promise of the NHS is fulfilled.
In my riding of Saint John-Rothesay, were experiencing, unfortunately, a housing affordability crisis, much like across this country. It's been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. There are currently over 1,500 people on the waiting list for affordable housing. Unfortunately, despite all of our efforts, that list continues to grow by the day. That's why I've advocated for additional pathways for direct federal funding for affordable housing through the NHS. It's why I was thrilled when our government announced the $1 billion rapid housing initiative this past fall. Immediately after this announcement, my team and I began working closely with the City of Saint John and other proponents in the riding to ensure that our community took full advantage of this opportunity to rapidly and significantly increase the stock of affordable housing within it.
This effort resulted in the submission of an application by Housing Alternatives and their group for funding through the projects stream of the RHI to create 30 affordable housing units in the old St. Vincent's High School in Saint John.
We have been working closely with Minister Hussen's team to advocate for this project. I was pleased to see positive announcements through the major cities stream in recent weeks, but I am also keen to see this and other projects stream applications accessed quickly by CMHC. I'm pleased to hear from you that all proponents will have news from CMHC by the end of the month.
Obviously, I certainly understand and respect that there were the two streams. Halifax was the only city in Atlantic Canada that qualified for that stream. Obviously, in my province, we have Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Bathurst, Miramichi and other cities that are very anxious about their applications.
My first question for you, Ms. Bowers, is what was the regional breakdown of the 765 applications received through the projects stream?