Human Resources Committee on June 13th, 2022

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today and for stating how critical it is that we address the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized individuals, women in particular. The statistics are distressing.

My first question is for Ms. Silva and Ms. Whitzman.

As you know, the housing accelerator fund is for municipalities.

Ms. Silva, when you appeared before the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, you spoke to the lack of affordable housing for indigenous people in British Columbia's urban centres and the importance of densification. We do want to see more housing, and urban densification is one way to get some built.

Can this fund intended for municipalities help us achieve these goals given that a number of municipalities have zoning and regulatory issues?

Also, how can this fund help you reach the goal we all share, which is to provide greater support to women, specifically those who are most vulnerable?

I'd like to hear from Ms. Whitzman first, and then Ms. Silva.

[Carolyn Whitzman]

Thank you, Ms. Martinez Ferrada.

I'll answer in English.

There are two ways that, through working with municipalities, the needs of indigenous women can be respected and met. The first is having set-asides. For instance, 20% of the City of Toronto's affordable housing will be developed by Miziwe Biik, which is an indigenous organization that works with urban indigenous people in Toronto.

The second is by treating them, for instance with the Squamish Nation, as a municipal government. The Squamish Nation right now is doing one of the most outstanding and interesting projects in Canada, the Sen̓áḵw development, which when built out should have 7,000 rental units in Vancouver. There can be direct negotiation, I would think—I'm not indigenous; I'm not a constitutional lawyer—with indigenous nations that have treaty land. Obviously it's up to the federal government to create treaties. For instance, I live in Ottawa on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people, and it would be great if there was a suitably sized piece of land that could be negotiated. I know there are ongoing negotiations.

Perhaps I misunderstood the question. I think I did—I can tell by your nodding—but I think it's possible to have sub-targets and do negotiations.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Whitzman.

What do you think, Ms. Silva?

[Sarah Silva]

It would be great to have this funding also for first nations on reserve. It can be a little bit frustrating how sometimes the fund looks at on reserve and off reserve differently. Because we have a traditional territory, we are an unceded first nation, so it would be great to be able to get access to this fund within our traditional territory. I think there are opportunities to partner with different first nations and different indigenous non-profits as well to be able to provide housing for women and our vulnerable community members in future affordable housing projects as well.

I think we need to get rid of that on-reserve, off-reserve way of thinking. Municipalities can also support first nations with the development of infrastructure, but also servicing. Municipal service agreements are needed for most of the Squamish Nation's reserves. We just signed one with the City of Vancouver, but we do require them with all of our other municipalities. Those municipal service agreements give us access to water, utilities and all sorts of stuff. A lot of those need to be done to be able to do the housing that we need to be able to bring everybody home within the next generation. Those can be really long agreements and take a really long time. It would be great to see those municipalities make those municipal service agreements a priority.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Silva.

The witnesses gave us their recommendations verbally, but I’d like to invite them to submit documents to the committee specifically indicating how this fund could be enhanced to support their municipalities.

I have 30 seconds left to ask you a quick question about housing affordability, Mr. Gladstone. I would be remiss not to ask about something that really concerns me, having lived for a few years in housing that was ill-adapted to the needs of my autistic, disabled brother.

How can we better assist you to improve access to housing through the housing accelerator fund?

I'm sorry, you only have 20 seconds left to respond.

[Gary Gladstone]

That's not a problem. Thank you very much.

The answer is 10%. The answer is that in order for municipalities to be able to access any funds within, they must, similar to the national housing strategy, allocate funds and units to those with developmental disabilities. The suggestion based on the need in Ontario was 10%, so that would be the answer—10%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Martinez Ferrada.

Ms. Chabot, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being with us today, whether in person or virtually. I'm pleased to meet you.

Our committee is currently studying options for the construction of 100,000 new homes by 2024‑25. However, there's no indication of what percentage of the homes will be for people with disabilities, women or indigenous people. We're talking about $4 billion over five years for 100,000 new builds.

Let's face it, given how many requests we're getting for accessible rental housing—and I’m not blaming anyone for that—we're still a long way off. Actually, with respect to the national housing strategy, 1.8 million households still lack housing. I think you mentioned that, Ms. Whitzman. So, there's still a big gap.

On that note, I'd like to ask Ms. Kurdi a question.

You stated in your testimony that housing units needed to be 100% adaptable from the outset. In other words, they must be designed to adapt to certain eventualities that may arise.

You also said that we should avoid repeating past mistakes. What mistakes are you referring to?

[Thea Kurdi]

Thank you very much.

That is a great question. I have been working in this industry for over 21 years. I do all different types of projects, but my passion projects are accessible playgrounds and housing.

Unfortunately, we see a lot of really avoidable mistakes with the funding formulas being too complex. I mentioned, in my witness statement, that the way we teach design education is as much a part of the problem we're experiencing as not knowing what to do. We think about accessibility as something that is “othering” and say, “Disabled people need that, not me.” If you think about how different you were 20 years ago and how different you're likely going to be in 20 years, then the concepts of who you are designing for and “everybody changes" are fundamentally important.

Some of the mistakes we see in the current design strategies and funding models are.... Operationally, if you require only certain units, or a percentage of units, to be accessible, most of those accessibility requirements are for wheelchair users, and that's only a small percentage of the different types of disabilities we have. Further, what requirements they do include for wheelchair users don't actually create usable spaces.

Some of the mistakes we see, for example.... If it says “an accessible path of travel must be provided to the front door and then from the front door to the washroom” or “to a bedroom” or “to the kitchen”, the design industry doesn't know that a path of travel needs to include a turning space for an assistive piece of equipment. In the building code, the size and space of the turn circle is not evidence-based sizing. It's a negotiated settlement.

Designable Environments worked with, I think, the National Research Council several years ago on a study about what was missing from the national building code. This, again, goes to some of the mistakes we're making: We fundamentally design for non-disabled people without thinking that 100% of us will have disabilities at some point.

We found, in that study, that there were—

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Kurdi. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I don't have much time to ask my questions.

[Thea Kurdi]

I'm sorry. I don't have a countdown clock.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

If you have any documentation on this, please forward it to us, it'll be very useful.

My next question is for Mr. Gladstone.

You did mention 10%. My understanding is that if we were to set a percentage of housing that would go to developmentally disabled individuals, that would be it.

You also talked about the cost and scarcity of land. You suggest giving non-profits the opportunity to purchase land. Can you tell me more about this? I understand you support the idea of non-profits being able to purchase land to build housing for developmentally disabled individuals. Is that correct?

[Gary Gladstone]

Currently in Ontario, at least 16,000 individuals with developmental disabilities are awaiting appropriate housing, and 90% of those with intellectual and developmental disabilities are on ODSP. They can only have a maximum $497 in rent. The only way that those rent calculations can make any sense is with the support of government.

Reena is in the process of building our newest intentional community residence, the Frankfort Family Reena Residence in Toronto. For those of you familiar with Toronto, it's near the Allen expressway and Eglinton. It's a 19-storey building that will house 160 individuals of diverse needs. The total projected budget is $75 million and, in order to make the units affordable, we're looking at about $20 million to come from various governments and an extra $5.5 million that we already have from City of Toronto waivers. As well as that, CMHC, with their low mortgage rates, makes it affordable and allows us to get down to those numbers.

To the point that the previous witness made vis-à-vis accessibility and mistakes made, there are also various strangenesses in the building codes throughout the municipalities. It's obviously not an issue here, but I will tell you that one of the reasons that Reena builds our own is that we know what the individuals we support need in terms of their support, and no one else can build to those standards.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Gladstone and Madame Chabot.

Ms. Zarrillo, you have six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all of the witnesses who came to speak to us today.

I want to speak a little bit about the human rights lens that was mentioned by a number of witnesses today. The housing accelerator fund has a framing of market development to get 100,000 units of housing going.

I guess I would start with Ms. Kurdi.

Ms. Kurdi, on this idea of a human rights lens, like some of the commitments that were made in the national housing strategy and even in the accessibility act that Canada has commitments to, what is the missing link? What is it that's not being upheld for human rights in relation to housing?

[Thea Kurdi]

I've always been confused. How do we define who a person is in this country? Under the Canadian charter, we say that people with disabilities are equal citizens, yet our national building code fails to create or even exempts, in many cases, housing from having to be accessible. That doesn't seem to align for me, especially as the human rights code specifically—and I'm paraphrasing—says that buildings and spaces shall not discriminate against people with disabilities.

As mentioned before, if we want to talk about intersectionality with any of the groups represented here today and any of the conversations we've had, disability is the only thing that doesn't discriminate against everybody. A hundred per cent of us are going to need to have accessible housing. Even more than that, if you're going to live in a community and not be isolated, you need to be able to have people visit you in your home and also be able to visit others in their homes.

The idea of visitable design is creating a level entrance into a home and access to a bathroom with a transfer space and turn circle. We look at the space impacts, and we look at the cost impacts. Most of what we need when we teach designers well how to do this doesn't cost a lot more. It's not hard to do. It's not rocket science. It just is a different way of thinking.

From a human rights perspective, I think that just makes more holistic sense, because it reduces the pressure for long-term care, and it reduces the impact on health care. There are so many benefits, and it fundamentally doesn't discriminate against any one of us at any time in our lives.

I hope that helps.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

That's great. Thank you so much.

My last question is for Ms. Whitzman. The Minister of Housing was in recently and said that we are investing in the development of more inclusive and accessible communities through the national housing strategy. The affordable housing innovation fund is encouraging projects, and it says that they will not get a cent—no development will get a cent—if it's not meeting the accessibility guidelines of the national housing strategy.

You mentioned that 33% of housing should be for diversity in the national housing strategy and that, again, these human rights are not being upheld. I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on how this housing accelerator fund can meet those numbers and how the national housing strategy is potentially failing us right now in that area.

[Carolyn Whitzman]

Thank you, MP Zarrillo.

I didn't say 33% of funding. The federal government said 33% of funding. That's in the CMHC documents. Frankly, I'm not quite sure where that 33% comes from given that women-led households are 40% of households and they're twice as likely as male-led households to be in housing need. I don't actually know where that number comes from, but I think my colleague, Mr. Gladstone, was talking about sub-targets. Sub-targets are really important in the agreements, but then it's also really important that the federal government signal its housing right intentions, which include targeting those in greatest housing need and using maximum available resources. That can happen not just through funding but through the release of government land, because we know that land is 15% to 30% of cost, depending on where it is in the city. Non-profit development, by the way, can knock off another 20% so I'm not quite sure why it needs to be private development and scale matters immensely.

In the 1970s the federal government supported False Creek South in Vancouver and the St. Lawrence neighbourhood in Toronto. Those were large-scale developments that were two-thirds non-profit housing and continue to provide affordable housing for thousands of people. Those are the kinds of “bang for the buck” developments that should be promoted through the housing accelerator fund and can help promote human rights, particularly if there are sub-targets within them that focus on particularly vulnerable groups. We've been hearing today about people with physical and intellectual disabilities, women, indigenous people.

We all have multiple identities, so it's not like it's 33% for women-led households and 20%, let's say, for indigenous households and 10% for intellectual disabilities. People have intersectional identities and you can tick off a couple of boxes at the same time, but those are the kinds of expectations the federal government should have in working with municipalities and should support through layering its funding programs in order to have genuinely affordable housing.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I think my time is up, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

No, you have 20 seconds.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

It's okay. I'll pass. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Zarrillo.

Now we go to Mr. Liepert for five minutes.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I wanted to get a bit of a better understanding of on-reserve, off-reserve challenges. I'm going to start with Ms. Hayward.

You mentioned the number of 7,000 units being built. Is that on reserve, off reserve or a combination of the two, and is that in the last year, which I think you said? Could you clarify that for me, please?

[Celeste Hayward]

Sure. All of our housing units are off reserve. Of that 2,100 are being built in the next two years, and 5,500 are already built and are servicing indigenous people right now.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Okay, so this is all off-reserve housing you're talking about.