Thank you for having me here today.
First, I would like to congratulate the federal government on the recent agreements with the Province of Ontario to provide a full HST rebate on homes under $1 million and to cut development charges by up to half. The combined impact of these moves will cut the costs of new homes by 15% to 20%, and make new homes competitive with resale homes, which will increase housing starts. Since these are temporary measures, the Missing Middle Initiative encourages all governments to use this time to first extend these agreements to other provinces, but also to enact further reforms to drive down the costs of building new homes.
Earlier this year, the CMHC released projections showing that housing starts will fall in each of the next three years. The HST and DC reforms will help reverse that trend, but they are insufficient to reach the government's 500,000 annual housing start target. We would encourage the federal government to take further action, such as implementing the MURB reforms promised during the 2025 election. We would also encourage the government to develop a goal, and not just a target, to address the middle-class housing crisis.
I'm here to today to discuss Bill C-20 and Build Canada Homes, which can be important pieces in achieving the government's housing target. We believe that there is merit to BCH's approach of using federal land to build housing that the market otherwise would not, while simultaneously using government procurement as a tool to drive innovation.
Missing Middle, however, has significant concerns around implementation and transparency. BCH lacks a clear goal, lacks targets and lacks key performance indicators and accountability measures. The public has not been told how many homes the program will complete, what types of homes, what the rents or prices will be, and over what time frame. I can't tell you, five years from now, whether or not BCH has been working, as there are no benchmarks for success. That's a problem.
Our team is also concerned about the lack of transparency regarding the unit mix to be created, and that those homes will not meet the needs of larger families. In Canada in 2021, there were roughly 300,000 households with five or more persons who rented their homes. Over half of this group lived in unsuitably small housing, according to the federal government's national occupancy standard, and of those approximately 150,000 families living in unsuitable housing, to meet the government's standard, 78% needed a home with four or more bedrooms. Despite this, we do not know what proportion of homes built by BCH will be large enough to suit these families.
However, what we do know is concerning. In BCH's investment policy framework, project proponents are encouraged to, “leverage the [CMHC's] Housing Design Catalogue” in their proposals. However, in that design catalogue, for Ontario, only one of 21 units has four bedrooms, with 16 of the 21 having two bedrooms or fewer. This leaves us concerned that BCH will build few homes that are suitable for larger families. We encourage the government to provide greater transparency regarding the types and sizes of the units to be created, and to not forget that households come in all shapes and sizes, including multi-generational families.
Thank you for your time.