Madam Speaker, I can either say that great minds think alike, or that because we both come from the two major cities in this country that are having problems with housing, that my colleague has spoken about something that I intend to speak about.
I want to support this budget implementation bill. As we heard earlier on, it is not just about lowering taxes for everybody, and it is not about boutique tax benefits or tax credits. One of the things that has always plagued my city of Vancouver a great deal is housing. Back in 1997, when I was a minister in the Chrétien government, we saw the problem of homelessness beginning to emerge. Later on, there was the inability to have access to affordable rental housing. We have seen people unable to buy into housing. We have seen the co-op housing system begin to weaken, because a lot of the co-op housing that was built in the sixties has begun to fall into disrepair.
We began to invest in housing. It is important. This was something that we started to do. It had begun to make an impact, but for a decade we saw very little investment in housing entirely. In my city of Vancouver, we can walk down the street and see tent cities, and that is a homelessness issue. We see people who cannot afford to take shelter. We know that there are many women who cannot afford to stay anywhere because of the fear of violence. They have to find a place to get housing that is going to shelter them.
We looked at the whole spectrum of housing in the budget, and that is very important. We looked at homelessness. We are looking at women who are fleeing violence, who are now getting safe shelters to live in. We are looking at the ability to have affordable rental housing. People do not understand, unless they live in a riding like mine, that we have a whole lot of people who cannot afford to move into their own housing, who cannot afford a first home, so they are staying in affordable rentals. The people who need affordable rentals cannot get into affordable rentals because of that bottleneck.
The ability to move into that next front is where we have come back into the housing market. We have done that. For the first time in a decade, the federal government is back into a national housing strategy, working with provinces, working with municipalities, and working with the private sector to build housing, so that people can afford to move out of affordable rental housing and move into homes and first homes. We have formed a very strong partnership with the cities across this country. We have seen them moving forward. We have seen that need for them to start to build, and we have seen provinces coming together with us to be able to build housing.
Housing is a fundamental human right. People who cannot afford housing live on the streets. People who cannot afford housing live in substandard housing. Their children get sick very easily. Their children cannot do homework, cannot go to school, and they cannot thrive. They cannot find that means to move forward so that the next generation can do better than this one. The issue of child poverty is inherently linked with the issue of housing. We have seen this happening in my riding over and over. People are housed in a two-bedroom place with five children and two parents, and quite often grandparents. For me, the most important thing is the ability to afford housing.
We put in $550 million over two years for the affordable housing initiative, and that is a doubling of federal funds in that category. We are supporting 100,000 households. That is a large number of people. We will be able to build new units, renovate existing homes, and provide rent supplements. There will be $30 million over two years for co-op rent subsidies. We know that co-op housing is an essential form of housing. It came in during the fifties and sixties and allowed people to move into a home of their own, where 50% of the people had market housing and 50% of the people had subsidized housing. This an important way to allow people to live. Families grow up in co-op housing, and they have moved on from co-op housing when the children leave into single unit seniors housing. It is a small village, where people begin to build their lifestyles.
We are continuing to allow rent geared to income in those co-ops, with $200 million over two years to seniors for affordable housing. I have a lot of seniors in my riding, and for many of them, if they are going to pay for their housing needs or rent housing where rents are going up and up, they cannot afford to eat.
When we talk about what a budget must do, it must not just help the middle class. That is what we are hoping to do. A good government needs to look after the most vulnerable, those who cannot afford the necessities of life that keep them healthy and strong.
Another part of the budget I like is the ability to help seniors. A lot of seniors are chronically ill. They suffer with diabetes or arthritis. They cannot afford to eat properly. They are filling the hospitals.
It is a case of understanding that when we put money into things like this, we save money at the other end in terms of health care.
Putting money into community housing and into home care units is important in allowing people to age in their communities and to have a good quality of life as they get older. These are really important problems we are trying to solve.
We are putting $208 million for CMHC towards supporting 4,000 units of affordable rental housing. We are exploring innovative ways to lower costs and risks. We are committed to developing a national housing strategy with the provinces, territories, indigenous governments, cities, and stakeholders. We will get a report from the minister on the consultations on this new housing strategy on November 22.
This is the first time we have begun to talk about the need for housing as an absolute staple in people's lives. In fact, the talk about getting back into housing has prompted some provinces to put money directly into housing. I know that the Province of British Columbia has committed $500 million to affordable housing in this fiscal year alone. It is the largest increase in B.C. history for housing. The City of Vancouver, which does not have a lot of money, has offered 20 sites, worth $250 million, on which the federal and provincial governments can build housing.
I cannot stress too much how important housing is. When I was a little girl, I grew up in social housing. I know the need for housing. I know the dignity of housing. I know the need to live in a place where one can be proud to bring one's friends home. I know the need my parents had to afford a place for me to live and to still afford to feed me and ensure that I got a good education. These are the kinds of things that help people move up the ladder so that future generations can do better, go higher, and begin to form stable lives.
Talking about seniors again, we know that many seniors cannot afford to eat food and live at the same time, so we have actually moved 900,000 low-income single seniors out of poverty by increasing the guaranteed income supplement. We have allowed people to get their old age security at 65. Many people at 65 have to retire, because they have been working in jobs where they have hurt themselves. They have back problems. They are not able to continue to work until age 67. That means that we are in touch with people. We were listening to what people were telling us they need.
We committed, in the spring, with the agreement of all the provinces, to do something that is really important: expand the CPP. We know that many people in this new world of work are working in precarious jobs. Not only are they working in part-time jobs with no security but they are working in jobs where they do not foresee retirement. Their employers are not able to give them the kinds of pensions we had about 20 years ago. We see people needing to put down those roots so that when they are seniors, they can be healthy seniors who are not in and out of hospitals in a health care system that is not able to support them, because we are all aging.
One of the things we see is that benefits will reach 33%, not only for seniors who are going to be retiring soon but for young people who are getting into the workforce who can look forward to about another 25 years of work. They can actually look at having a proper retirement and to being healthy when they retire.
I would like to say one final thing. Government is not just about taxes. Government is about ensuring that the taxes we get from the population go toward helping those who are most vulnerable. As a Liberal, for me, this is very important, because there are so many people in my riding who are extremely vulnerable. This budget is helping them.