It is essential for all the efforts made by all levels of government to prioritize the production and renovation of affordable rental housing. The market continues to produce on its own, without the government's help, new housing for households that don't really have difficulty finding housing.
Governments should also recognize the vital role of community housing organizations and their beneficial impact on Canadians. That recognition must translate into access to all measures and contributions that are necessary to keep paid rent at an affordable level for all community project housing.
Under federal funding for transportation, increased funding for rental projects could be possible for all new housing in the development sector focused on public transit.
Surplus federal properties have a solid housing development potential. We think a significant portion of new housing on those properties should be given to the community housing sector and be fully affordable. We think the government must be a model, an example, in this case.
Housing construction must be accelerated. Concerning the new $4-billion housing accelerator fund, we suggest that money be contributed directly to the creation of affordable housing instead of administrative functions.
Among the obstacles is the red tape involved in program administration. Accountability is clearly needed, but it can still be adapted and improved to achieve the objective of doing things better and faster.
Project selection through calls for proposals does not guarantee the government that the best projects will be selected. The outcome of the call will just be a reflection of the opportunities that arose when the call was launched. However, real estate needs predictability to direct opportunities toward concrete achievements. Ongoing intake is still the best option for managing the measures adopted for funding community and affordable housing.
The delivery of a real property project requires a critical amount of time it is now difficult to compress to respect all the constraints. However, the more projects are ongoing, the higher the likelihood of some of them being delivered over the short term. Other projects will follow, according to the constraints to be respected and problems to be solved. So it is desirable over the very short term that a number of projects be selected across various measures. The budgets for those measures should not be spread out over five years, but rather be made available in the first two years, so that, at the outset, enough projects would be selected and enable us to meet the established targets as quickly as possible.
Building subsidies are necessary for affordable housing to be produced, but they are insufficient for very low income households. The housing allowance program exists, but, once again, the subsidy levels cannot address the shortfall. We think it would be desirable for the government to increase its participation in the program.
That requires programs that are good at handling administrative issues, have an ongoing intake and a recurrence of those measures over the next few years to help us increase and accelerate housing construction.
Thank you.