Thanks for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Carolyn Whitzman. I'm with the Women's National Housing and Homelessness Network.
We welcome the federal government's commitment to grow the annual housing supply in the country's largest cities every year, creating a target of 100,000 new middle-class homes by 2026 through the $4-billion housing accelerator fund confirmed in April's federal budget.
We note that HAF is being administered by CMHC under the rubric of the 2017 national housing strategy. This strategy commits the federal government to work with other levels of government using a human rights-based approach to lift 530,000 households living in unaffordable, overcrowded or inadequate homes out of housing need by 2028—of the approximately 1.7 million households identified as living in housing need—and to eliminate chronic homelessness by 2030.
The National Housing Strategy Act, adopted in 2019, further stipulates that the Government of Canada commit to implementing housing as “a fundamental human right” through its policies, programs and budgetary decisions, including its spending power for housing programs in other jurisdictions.
As the CMHC has recognized, households led by women and gender-diverse people, especially single mothers, are the most likely to be in core housing need. Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+ and new migrant households, as well as people with disabilities, also experience disproportionate rates of housing needs and homelessness.
Multiple evaluations have shown that the federal government's current housing programs will not adequately meet its targets of having a net number of tenant households in need or eliminating chronic homelessness. The average income for households in need is $23,000 a year, equating to a monthly maximum rent of $575 a month, yet the vast majority of loans and grants under the NHS are now being provided to private sector developers without human rights due diligence and almost no gender and intersectional analysis of outcomes. The result has been a proliferation of homes, the majority of which are unaffordable to average income earners, with a minority of so-called short-term affordable homes that fail to address housing need across the country.
The housing accelerator fund is an opportunity for the Government of Canada to reset. It can proactively put its commitment to the right to housing into action to address growing rates of housing needs by working with municipalities to transform systems. To this end, we offer the following recommendations.
First, design a housing accelerator fund using the act's human rights framework and a gender and intersectional approach, a GBA+ approach. That includes defining “affordable housing” as homes costing no more than 30% of gross household income and ensuring that those affordable units remain affordable in perpetuity. HAF should adopt the CMHC's definition of “affordable” housing, which is housing that costs no more than 30% of gross household income.
In addition, HAF should adhere to the CMHC's definition of “core housing need”, which includes housing that costs more than 30% of a household's before-tax income to pay the median rent, including utility costs, of alternative local market housing that meets standards for affordability, overcrowding and repair.
HAF should define “middle class” as moderate-income households, as well as allowing for housing subsidies for low-income households to flow into those new homes. Again, I think this ties into what a few of the previous deputants were saying. The housing accelerator fund is a reworking of the 1975 federal housing action plan, whose objective was to stimulate the residential construction industry to ensure an adequate supply of housing to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income households.
Current research—and I'm part of that research—shows that the majority of households in need have very low incomes: less than 20% of their area median household income, or low incomes at 20% to 50% of median income. A smaller number have moderate incomes of 50% to 80% of their area median household income.
As the CMHC has recognized, larger households led by women and gender-diverse people, and especially single-mother-led families, are most likely to be in housing need. That's particularly true for those who are indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, newcomers or persons with disabilities.
That's why the national housing strategy committed to allocating 33% of funding investments towards diverse households led by women. HAF should prioritize scaling up moderate-income homes at target rents of $1,000 to $1,800 per month, depending on the size of the home and the local income. It should then target Canada housing benefits to subsidize those new homes for very low and low-income groups and monitor outcomes for NHS targets, as well as sub-targets for women and gender-diverse people.
Lifting adequately housed individuals and households can be done by stacking the rapid housing initiative; the co-investment fund; a reformed rental construction financial initiative; non-profit development; using government land, as a my colleague Mr. Gladstone said; doing as-of-right approvals for non-profit and affordable development, as the City of Victoria is doing now; prioritizing low-cost financing for low-cost homes; and large-scale development, including the use of modular and wood frame techniques.
I'll stop there. Thanks very much.