Human Resources Committee on May 19th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

That concludes the first group of witnesses.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Can we get in writing what the jersey represents to MP Kusie?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Yes. I believe, Mr. Moffatt, that committee members are inquisitive about the uniform behind you.

[Dr. Mike Moffatt]

A lifetime ago, I was head coach of Canada's national dodgeball team; and yes, we do have one. We won gold back in 2013 and 2014.

I would like to say to Ms. Kusie as well, I think my comments may have been misinterpreted. I am certainly not advocating more of the same from the federal government. I would like to see changes. I just throw that out there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Okay. Thank you to all of the witnesses for appearing today.

We will suspend while we prepare for the second group of witnesses. Again, thank you Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Moffatt, and to Mr. Pomeroy, who is appearing in person.

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Welcome back to the committee's study on the housing accelerator fund.

Before I welcome the witnesses who are appearing virtually, I would like to advise you that you can choose to participate in the language of your choice. You can do that by clicking on the interpretation service icon on your Surface device. As well, if there is a loss of interpretation, please signal me by using the “raise hand” icon, and we will suspend while it's clarified. For those members in the room, if there is an interpretation loss, please raise your hand and let me know. I would also ask the witnesses to speak slowly for the benefit of the interpreters so that we have no issue with interpretation.

I would like to welcome the following witnesses: Brian Rosborough, executive director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, and Amber Crawford, senior adviser; and Michael Braithwaite, chief executive officer of Blue Door Support Services.

Welcome back again, Michael. We had problems the last time.

We are also joined by Mr. Seth Asimakos, general manager and founder of Kaléidoscope.

We will begin with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, for five minutes.

Whichever witness is going to provide the opening remarks, you now have five minutes. I will indicate 10 seconds as you are approaching your timeline.

[Brian Rosborough, Executive Director, Association of Municipalities of Ontario]

Thank you for the opportunity to appear today before the committee.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Brian Rosborough, the executive director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. As the chair mentioned, I am joined today by my colleague Amber Crawford, who is a senior adviser at AMO. AMO is the collective voice of the 444 municipal governments in Ontario.

Housing affordability is really one of the greatest challenges facing our province and, indeed, our country. AMO has worked on this issue for many years with both the provincial and the federal governments. It's a truly complex issue and not one that municipal governments can solve on their own. In fact, the demand levers and supply actions are mostly held by others. Ultimately, we believe that solutions must involve a variety of actions from all orders of government and the development industry.

Earlier this year, AMO released a policy paper with nearly 90 recommendations for the various stakeholders that need to be involved. The document, titled “A Blueprint for Action: An Integrated Approach to Address the Ontario Housing Crisis”, can be found on our website. Local leaders in Ontario are already rolling up their sleeves to do their part to improve housing options for people.

The measures and investments in federal budget 2022 include the housing accelerator fund. which is most welcome. The fund has great potential to help get housing built faster, through direct and flexible investments that allow municipalities to tackle the most serious local barriers to supply.

Increasing supply is crucial, but it is important to ensure that the housing accelerator fund enables the right kind of supply. Like FCM, which has also appeared before this committee, AMO believes that the right supply means affordable options—both market and non-market—that are aligned with the shared federal-provincial-municipal vision of low-carbon intensification and transit-oriented development. The right supply also means focusing on the specific local supply gaps unique to each local market.

However, we would also say that new supply is not the only solution. There is also work to be done to preserve existing housing stock that is affordable, especially purpose-built rental housing. In our blueprint, AMO supported the call by FCM for the federal government to provide acquisition funding and/or grants for the non-profit and co-operative sectors to purchase existing multi-residential buildings and keep them affordable for low-income tenants.

Our main purpose today with the time we have remaining is to provide input on the housing accelerator fund's program design. All municipalities can benefit from these investments. Flexibility is key to customizing local solutions. The housing accelerator fund must also account for the needs of smaller, rural and northern communities.

Ultimately, we would like to see a broad list of eligible activities that can be funded. Some examples we would highlight include activities such as establishing digital e-permitting; improving the development approvals processes, such as instituting Lean Six Sigma methodologies; increasing human resource capacity for municipal planning and approval processes; the adoption of new systems where feasible and desirable, such as the community planning permit system and/or a community improvement plan; conducting data analysis of local housing market needs; studying market conditions that are required prior to enacting inclusionary zoning or for transit-oriented housing developments; purchasing land for affordable housing development; addressing Nimbyism through public awareness campaigns; consulting about indigenous peoples' housing needs within municipal boundaries; and the collection and dissemination of best practices.

Our point is that there are many things that would help on the ground with different local circumstances.

We also have advice about the implementation considerations that include giving priority to projects that increase affordable housing supply both in the private market and in the not-for-profit and co-operative housing sectors; making the housing accelerator fund stackable with other federal programs, such as the national housing co-investment fund; and considering formula-based allocations rather than application-based funding as much as is feasible.

Last, we understand that the committee is open to advice about the federal lands initiative. This is important, given the high cost of land in the development process in many locations in the country. AMO supports the government working with FCM to redesign and expand the federal lands initiative by providing surplus land or underused Crown lands to municipal governments.

This should be contingent on building affordable or “missing middle” housing solutions.

With that, I'll conclude my remarks. Thank you for listening and for your consideration. Amber and I would be very pleased to answer questions when time permits.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Rosborough.

Now we'll go to Mr. Braithwaite for five minutes.

[Michael Braithwaite, Chief Executive Officer, Blue Door Support Services]

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be back.

My name is Michael Braithwaite, and I'm the CEO of Blue Door, an organization up in York Region that's been serving our community for about 40 years.

For the first 35 of those years, we were primarily focused on emergency housing, and over the last five, although we are still the largest provider of emergency housing in York Region, we have switched to providing some secondary housing, transitional housing and housing for specific groups like 2SLGBTQ+ youth. There was a need, and we filled that need through housing in the community.

We have switched our thinking. We've gone to more innovative thinking and have leveraged private donor funds to create sustainable, affordable rental housing for seniors, families and youth. We repurposed a vacant Parks Canada home. There are 44 of them in Rouge National Urban Park. We took one of the homes that was empty and in bad shape and turned it into a duplex, which will provide affordable housing for 30 years for two families.

With the funds from Reaching Home, we were able to buy a fourplex in Newmarket and work with partners to create long-term truly affordable housing for indigenous men, for women fleeing violence, for families at Blue Door and for single men and women looking for affordable housing.

We and our entire sector applaud the implementation of the housing accelerator fund and would make the following recommendations moving forward.

First, invest in and encourage community land trusts across the country. Purchasing land for land trusts and providing incentives for municipalities or developers to donate housing or property to land trusts can create truly affordable housing for years to come in many communities. We're in the process of doing that now, expanding an existing land trust from Toronto into York Region, with the help of the mayor of Newmarket, to create a land trust with funds from CMHC.

Second, provide funds to non-profits or charities with a focus on housing and homelessness to purchase existing rental housing. Mr. Pomeroy just presented to the group, and you know the statistic that for every purpose-built rental, we're losing 15 to the private sector. We need to get them into the hands of non-profits and charities like Blue Door. Recently, a nineplex in Aurora was up for sale, and it had very affordable rents that were way below market. There was a fear that it would go to the private sector and renovations would take place and we'd lose it to that sector because the funds weren't there.

Third, invest in programs like Blue Door's Construct program, a social enterprise that not only can help build the goal of hundreds of thousands of homes but will prevent homelessness by providing a living wage and meaningful work to youth, new Canadians and others across the country in the trades. Currently, there are over a dozen of these social enterprises operating across the country, with opportunities to create more moving forward.

Last, provide municipalities with the supports they need to create new zoning bylaws that might speed up the development of buildings and properties owned by faith communities willing to step up to create new affordable housing in this crisis. Right now in York Region, there are all sorts of faith communities with land and a willingness to do this, but some of the zoning pieces are a bit of a barrier getting in the way, so that could help create new housing quickly.

Thank you so much for listening, and thank you for your hard work and passion on this fund. We look forward to seeing it in action and look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite.

Now we'll go to Mr. Asimakos for five minutes.

[Seth Asimakos, General Manager and Founder, Kaléidoscope]

Thank you for this opportunity.

I am the general manager and co-founder of Kaléidoscope Social Impact, formerly the Saint John Community Loan Fund.

We're a 22-year-old organization, and we do three things. We do social finance, enabling other developers to develop affordable housing and mixed-use commercial and affordable housing. We also invest in social enterprises and microenterprises.

Our second service line is training—impact training, financial literacy, enterprise development training and youth entrepreneurship.

Our third vertical is our own real estate development. We have developed commercial new builds and have also renovated three buildings. We are currently at the last stage of design and financing for a 12-unit, plus commercial, supportive housing project. On the social finance side, we have three or four projects in the pipeline across New Brunswick that are building affordable housing units. There are probably about 50 altogether.

That's who we are as an organization. Our aim is to grow the fund to $10 million and hopefully to $20 million and $30 million. We probably need about $100 million in the fund just to leverage the builds that we do need in New Brunswick, to tell you the truth.

As context, New Brunswick's property values have doubled, and in some cases have tripled. We have 7,000 individuals on a waiting list for affordable housing in New Brunswick. Maybe a year and a half ago, when we did that study, there were 5,000. It has shot up incredibly, partially as a result of COVID and also as a result of people looking to the Maritimes as a place to live now. It's had a huge impact. We see many more people visible on the streets, as housing has pushed people from this level down to the next level and then to the streets.

If we look at the waiting list alone, at $200,000 a door, we would need $1.4 billion right there. The amount of money that's needed and that's being advocated.... It's still very limited, to put it in context.

I'll start by piggybacking on what's been said already. One is about enabling the maintenance of existing affordability. We were at a housing conference last week, and I heard an 8:1 ratio a few times. I didn't hear 15:1 as far as losing affordability to building new units goes, but that's our biggest problem right now. We have to find a way to purchase in the non-profit sector to maintain the existing supply, let alone build new stuff. I think that has to be a priority. There has to be a way to use that money to bridge the gap between what's being asked for on a price level and make it affordable for non-profits to purchase and maintain affordability.

As far as CMHC is concerned, since it's the main vehicle to get money out, it has to speed up the process. We're looking at six to 12 months for projects to get through a review, get to a letter of intent and finally get to an agreement and the flowing of capital. That's way too frigging slow. If you go to a bank, it won't take that long. We have to be able to speed that up. If you want to actually speed up the amount of affordable housing out there, you have to speed up the process. If that means you need more people, then hire more people at CMHC to do reviews.

The other option, similar to the social finance fund that they're going to be rolling out here shortly, is taking a chunk of money and getting giving it to intermediaries. That's another option. We are an intermediary, and we move considerably more quickly than CMHC in getting behind projects, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you. That concludes your time.

[Seth Asimakos]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Now we'll go to Mr. Ruff for six minutes.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks, Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for coming today and for providing some crucial testimony. It's fascinating. Sometimes the testimony is contradictory, depending on the panel, but I think that's important. It just highlights how complicated our country is and how diverse our country is.

Here's what I wanted to hit at. Being an Ontario MP, a rural MP, and being a couple of hours north of the epicentre of Toronto—no digs at my colleagues who are from the more populated areas—I will say that the pandemic has really exacerbated movement into more rural communities. That has been one of the key factors in driving up house prices as people have moved out of the bigger cities.

For example, the average price in my rural community of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound has now topped over $760,000, which is an increase of over 23% in just the first three months of 2021. When you get down into some of the other types of properties, single family homes are a bit lower, at just over $600,000, but are up 28% year over year. Townhouses or row units are almost $500,000, which is an increase of 40%, and apartments are $386,000, a 46% increase. The supply in my area is the lowest it has been in three decades, with 388 residential units available for sale at the end of March.

My point is just to highlight some of the challenges we're having. The things I'm hearing from not-for-profits, social housing developers and others are that for the not-for-profits, rezoning costs with municipalities are costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars. They've got the land and they've purchased it, but it's costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars to rezone. Also, just getting access to the loans, along with the approval timelines, and the access for both developing and just normal housing, and the regulations, etc., and so on....

I guess my first question for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario is two questions, because, based on your testimony here, you're talking about the use of the housing accelerator fund for everything from purchasing to resources, hiring, digitization and so on. I guess it's fair to say that you want the program to be as flexible as possible. My second question to you would be, from a rural versus urban percentage, what kind of access or percentage breakdown of the housing accelerator fund do you think...?

[Brian Rosborough]

I'll begin. Amber may have some additional comments as well.

I'll start with your second question, on the rural-urban divide. We certainly don't have a recommendation in terms of what that allocation needs to look like, but to be sure, this is an impact for rural, remote and northern communities as well. As the member said, the impact of COVID, remote working and people leaving large areas and going into more areas of the province has had a massive impact, really, throughout the province of Ontario. It is a market that we've seen escalate in some cases by 60% over the last couple of years. It will be important for this fund to be of service in those communities as well.

On the second part, municipalities are I think eager to accelerate approvals where possible, but there are many barriers in that situation as well, whether it's Nimbyism, a lack of planners who are available, workaround planning or provincial regulation. In some cases, it's not the municipalities but the sister organizations—the conservation authorities, the Ministry of Transportation and Ontario government ministries—that are causing some of those delays as well.

I'll ask Amber if she has some supplementary comments there, but I'll leave it at that.

[Amber Crawford, Senior Advisor, Association of Municipalities of Ontario]

Thank you.

I would add that one of the housing principles we've put forward in our blueprint is that, to your point on flexibility, it's very critical that provincial and federal governments ensure municipalities have sufficient flexibility to achieve their own housing affordability in ways that meet their own local needs rather than using one-size-fits-all solutions. I'd add that.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you for that.

I guess my next question could go to all three witnesses.

It's just to maybe build upon what the previous witness, Mr. Pomeroy, was speaking about. We've heard from other witnesses as well about social housing or affordable housing versus housing affordability and how that ties into the rental market as well. I'm interested, again, not in hard and fast percentages—maybe that's the wrong way to break it down—but on the importance of some of this access. Mr. Pomeroy was suggesting that maybe this isn't the right fund to be directing at social housing or affordable housing, but more just on housing affordability. Could we get comments?

We'll start with Mr. Braithwaite.

[Michael Braithwaite]

I agree with what Mr. Pomeroy is saying. This may not be the right fund for that. We do know that for people who need deeply affordable housing and people experiencing homelessness, the private market of rental supply is not cutting it right now, so we need to get more supply into the hands of social housing developers and to non-profits so it stays truly affordable—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have 10 seconds please.

[Michael Braithwaite]

—with a rent geared to income for a long time into the future. I would just add that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Ruff.

Now we'll go to Mr. Long for six minutes.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Good afternoon, Chair. Good afternoon, colleagues.

Good afternoon, Seth Asimakos. It's a pleasure that you're on the panel. Seth is from my riding of Saint John—Rothesay. It's wonderful that you're here.

First and foremost, I want to thank you, Seth, for your leadership and the work you do in our city, especially with the social enterprise hub and Kaléidoscope. It's transformation for the region, so keep doing what you're doing.

Obviously you're here today to talk about housing, and I'm here to talk to you, and we're here to talk to you to get your feedback on what we can do.

Before I start with my question, I take your point about CMHC. We need to be better; we need to be more reactive, and I agree that 12 to 16 to 18 months is too long.

I want to talk to you about land acquisition and how the housing accelerator fund could help. We certainly know that at times securing funding for land acquisition to build affordable housing is a challenge. We've come up with the housing accelerator fund of $4 billion, but do you think that this is something that could help address that challenge?

[Seth Asimakos]

Certainly land acquisition, property acquisition, is the first step in order to get anything triggered in a development. We built the social enterprise hub, and the lots were maybe $10,00 to $15,000 apiece. We paid $60,000, maybe. Well, I spent $60,000 on one lot a month ago, so that's where things are at. The starting point is so different right now.

To me, land acquisition is important. I like what Michael was saying about a land trust. One way to enable property acquisition and the maintenance of the affordability of land is to put stuff into a land trust. The land bank is an innovation here as well that we've started, and I'm on the board. There's a unique relationship with CMHC that can fund some of the acquisition that the land bank will be making over the next decade or so.

I think any time you can get involved with land acquisition so that we diminish the cost of the starting point is really, really important, for sure.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Thanks for that, Seth.

Chair, I'm going to share the balance of my time with MP Collins.