I'll do my best.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you committee members for the opportunity to appear this morning.
My name is Raymond Sullivan, and I am the executive director of the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, or CHRA.
CHRA, the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association, represents the non-market community housing sector. Our members are the non-profit developers and housing providers working with Build Canada Homes—and before that, with CMHC, and before that, with anyone they needed to work with to get the job done.
I think all of us in this room agree that we need more affordable housing. While the government is working to shift the Canadian economy to improve productivity and increase economic security, this will not work while the lack of affordable housing drags our economy down and drags individual households down.
We all agree that we need more affordable housing, but the real question is, affordable to whom? This is where Build Canada Homes can play an important role. It's important that you set its long-term course now, through this legislation, to make sure we see that positive impact in decades to come.
Every home is affordable to someone, but for some households, particularly those with modest and lower incomes, the market is simply not able to supply them with the homes they can afford. Even while housing prices and rents are levelling off, as they currently are in many jurisdictions—even showing some small declines—housing remains unaffordable for the 50% of Canadian households with incomes below the median.
Build Canada Homes, as Dr. Whitzman has pointed out, has adopted an income-based measure of affordability, creating four income groups: median, moderate, low and very low. This is good, but what is BCH's mandate on affordability? It needs to publish clear housing targets based on those income groups. How many homes will it create for moderate-income households? How many homes will it create for households with very low incomes? The minister has set aside $1 billion for transitional and supportive housing. That's fantastic. How many supportive housing units will Build Canada Homes create?
It's also important because “affordable”, which is a very general term, is not enough. The right question is, affordable to whom? If, one year from now, BCH proudly reports having created 20,000 new homes, will that be a success? It will only if a majority of those homes are affordable to low- and moderate-income households that otherwise can't be served by the private market.
When the Prime Minister launched Build Canada Homes, he said it would “focus primarily on non-market housing”. Non-market housing is housing that operates outside the private market. It's housing owned by co-operatives, public housing agencies, indigenous governments and indigenous non-profits, and the non-profit community housing providers that are our members.
Non-market housing can be available at modest market rents, at below market rents and at substantially subsidized rents affordable to the lowest-income households. The important distinction is that it is non-market housing outside of the private marketplace, but that's not reflected in the Build Canada Homes legislation.
We've seen many government housing programs in the present—and in the past—that provide loan subsidies and grants to private for-profit companies in exchange for affordability. In fact, the single biggest spending envelope currently under the national housing strategy does exactly that. Those companies diligently meet the minimum definition of affordability for the minimum amount of time, and when the government agreement is over, that housing reverts to full market rents. That is not the case with non-market housing. Non-market housing is mission-driven and motivated exclusively by affordability—permanently.
Following the Prime Minister's launch of BCH, I was very pleased to see its mandate clearly stated on its new website: “Grow the proportion of housing that is non-market, mission driven and that produces housing that is affordable for low- and middle-income households”.
When I saw Bill C-20, I was disappointed not to see that mandate reflected in the legislation. This is not a five-year government program. This is a new Crown corporation, something that should be built to last to help our housing system and to help our economy. Where is that long-term mandate in the legislation? Where are the Prime Minister's and minister's directions to future leadership?
Bill C-20 should specifically include BCH's mandate to focus on non-market community housing. The legislation should also require BCH to publish targets and results on what levels of affordability it will achieve, to whom it will be affordable and how many homes.
Finally, as an important note, BCH has to exist within an updated national housing strategy. Build Canada Homes is only part of the solution and, in fact, maintaining a national housing strategy, with targets, is also a legislated requirement. These two things have to fit together for the right systems-level impact. I hope the committee will also soon turn its attention to updating and renewing Canada's national housing strategy.
Thank you.