Mr. Speaker, the federal government chose to end the rental assistance program for co-ops and social housing projects whose operating agreements expired prior to April 1, 2016.
They have been excluded from phase two of the federal community housing initiative under the national housing strategy. It is inexplicable why tenants whose co-ops happen to have paid off their mortgages are not entitled to continued support, despite no change whatsoever in the tenants' need. A total of 277 co-ops are negatively impacted by this arbitrary decision, which affects over 7,500 households in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, P.E.I. and Quebec.
Equally disturbing is the fact that co-ops with operating agreements established under CMHC's then called urban native housing program are also excluded from receiving continued rent subsidy through FCHI-Phase 2.
We should not have to remind the government that one out of eight households in Canada lives in unstable, overcrowded, mouldy, cold or unaffordable housing. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report confirmed that close to 20% of urban, rural and northern indigenous households in Canada are in an unaffordable or unsuitable housing situation, a rate far above the national average.
The report identified 124,000 indigenous households in housing need, including 37,500 homeless in a given year. Equally disturbing is the finding that the annual affordability gap for indigenous households is $636 million. It is laughable that the Prime Minister claims that the new nation-to-nation relationship is the most important relationship, when the Parliamentary Budget Office revealed that only a measly 0.8% of the funding in the national housing strategy's 10-year plan is allocated to indigenous housing programs, and that funding is just ongoing subsidies for projects built before 1993.
Equally insulting is the fact that funding for new construction under the national co-investment fund earmarked to target indigenous housing only amounts to 0.5%, and 0% for all other major programs. Indigenous peoples are 11 times more likely to use a shelter. In Vancouver East, we have the largest homeless encampment in the country where 40% identify as indigenous. It is disgraceful how the Liberals fail to follow through with their promise that adequate housing is a basic human right, and their empty promise of a dedicated for-indigenous by-indigenous housing strategy has gone on for years.
By choosing not to provide rental assistance to the co-ops, the federal government is actively displacing low and limited income families, and putting them at risk of homelessness during a housing crisis in the middle of a pandemic. This flies in the face of the government's declaration in 2017 that adequate housing is a basic human right. It further contradicts the Liberal government's express wish to end chronic homelessness. The loss of these units will add to the overall loss of low income housing stock across the country.
It is estimated that 322,000 units of affordable housing were lost between 2011 and 2016. The last thing we need is for the federal government to add to that problem. Data collected by the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada says that this fate has already befallen some co-op housing members. A patchwork of provincial and municipal programs have provided some temporary stopgaps to prevent member residents from losing subsidy, but those temporary agreements are set to expire this year.
Alberta has been impacted. Ontario has been impacted. British Columbia and many other communities have been impacted. Half measures will not do, and the 12-month one-time funding initiative recently announced is not enough.