Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee for the invitation.
For those unfamiliar with the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, we are the national voice for the social, non-profit and affordable housing sector in Canada. Our members include social supportive housing providers, municipal housing organizations and 12 of 13 provincial and territorial housing departments.
The committee's study is based on two programs that we believe are important components of the national housing strategy. Briefly, I'd like to say a few words about how the two programs could be set up and improved to boost the affordable housing supply.
For starters, the $4-billion accelerator fund was introduced in budget 2022 with a promise to fund changes to the municipal systems and policies that are preventing more housing from being built. In January 2022, in anticipation of this announcement, CHRA held a consultation session with our members to get their input on the most effective uses for this fund. We captured these ideas in a letter to Minister Hussen, which was sent in February. We've provided a copy of that letter to the clerk.
I'll highlight just a few of the recommendations contained in that letter.
First, a lack of human resource capacity within municipal planning and approval departments is one of the biggest local barriers to housing development. Housing providers told us that applications often take so long to get approved simply because there aren't enough trained people to evaluate them. We'd recommend that one of the uses of the fund be to increase the number of staff in municipal approvals and planning departments and actually fund training and accreditation programs for them.
Second, we know that Nimbyism can be a huge hurdle in developing new housing, particularly community and social housing. Some municipalities have taken steps to combat Nimbyism by putting in place anti-NIMBY campaigns or by providing more information to local communities on the impacts of social housing or reforming public consultation processes, such as what they've done in Victoria, B.C. These efforts take resources. We would recommend that initiatives designed to address Nimbyism also be eligible under the fund.
Third, one of the most onerous aspects of affordable housing development is the misalignment between housing programs and policies between different orders of government. Oftentimes, community housing providers are forced to navigate between multiple programs at different levels of government, each with their own application criteria, timelines, funding levels and so forth. It's a situation that one of my members actually said was like trying to organize the world's worst Tinder date.
The accelerator fund could be used to provide the human and technological resources to allow orders of government to create one-stop shop approaches, where program criteria and application processes are aligned. Models such as this actually exist, for example, between the City of Calgary and CMHC. Again, these approaches require resources to implement. By including such an activity as eligible under the fund, the accelerator fund could accelerate more aligned, streamlined processes to be put in place.
The last thing I want to say about the housing accelerator fund is this.
We recommend that, under the fund, priority be given to projects aimed at fast-tracking and streamlining the construction of community and affordable housing units. Since non-market housing providers tend to have to rely on more complex municipal partnerships as compared with market housing providers and given Parliament's stated objective of prioritizing housing for vulnerable segments of the population, as set out in the 2019 right-to-housing legislation, all proposals to fast-track the construction of community housing units should be given precedence.
The other program you are examining is the federal lands initiative. In the lead-up to the 2017 national housing strategy, we had identified this program as holding great potential for incentivizing affordable housing development for the very simple reason that all housing projects start with land. Following the announcement in the 2017 national strategy that the program would be expanded to $200 million over 10 years, CHRA has provided additional recommendations in terms of how this program could be strengthened.
Notably, we have argued that the federal lands initiative could be dramatically improved if its mandate were to be expanded to include acquisition of provincial, territorial, municipal and even private sector lands, which could be subsequently transferred to affordable housing providers or land trusts, just like federal lands currently are.
In other words, the federal lands initiative could be styled almost as a mirror to the rapid housing initiative, which allows for the acquisition of existing properties, only in this case it would be for land. Given that a great deal of surplus federal lands are not conducive to building affordable housing—for example, they may not be located near mass transit—expanding the mandate of the federal lands initiative is a logical means to making the program more meaningful.
Mr. Chair, in conclusion, these two programs are not silver bullets. They won't solve the housing crisis, but they are welcome tools in that they are proverbial tools in the proverbial tool kit.
Thank you very much.