Mr. Speaker, the national housing strategy responds to every single one of the issues just raised by the member for Vancouver East. I am very proud to be part of a government that, for the first time in about 25 years, has returned leadership on the federal stage to the national government and has delivered a $72-billion national housing strategy, which is building in all sectors and in all parts of the spectrum of the housing challenges that this country faces.
The member dismisses the rapid housing initiative as not being an important initiative. However, the rapid housing initiative, in the last six months, has spent $1 billion to acquire close to 5,000 units of housing. We have just invested in the last budget, which is about to be voted on by this Parliament, another $1.5 billion to further extend that program. This program allows non-profits, cities, housing providers across the country and primarily indigenous housing providers, who have been a beneficiary of the last round of funding, to acquire those distressed properties. It was precisely in response to calls from the former UN rapporteur on housing and from different housing activists across the country that we built this program.
We have also taken the reaching home program from $50 million a year to $500 million a year to make sure that when we purchase these buildings, we end up with a program that also provides supports for people who are homeless, and makes sure that the housing works for them. On top of that, in the recent budget, we have also added $315 million in rent supports.
When the member opposite complains about the housing that we are building inside the market rental program and the co-investment fund and says that they are coming online at the wrong price point, she fails to understand that when we build housing we buy labour in the market, we buy land in the market and we buy supplies in the market. The only way to make it affordable, and deeply affordable, is to provide subsidies. That is why our program does all three things that a national housing strategy should do: It builds housing, repairs housing and subsidizes housing.
I will take the member back to her campaign platform and the commitment to build 500,000 units of housing. However, if members read the small print, it required cities to come up with one-third of the money. Now, if we take the national housing strategy's rapid housing initiative, $1 billion created 5,000 units of housing. To create 500,000 units, we would need about $100 billion based on the current price point. Asking cities at this time to come up with $33.3 billion to fund housing is an astonishing demand to make on cities when she knows they cannot afford that. What is really amazing is that she has absolutely no plan to subsidize to make that housing affordable, and no plan in her party platform to actually repair and maintain the housing that is going to be acquired through this fund. The NDP makes all kinds of grandiose statements and expects everybody else to pay for them, and when their programs do not get support, sits back and complains about the housing we do provide.
The national housing strategy has provided hundreds of thousands of new investments right across the country to provide housing that is both new and repaired and brought back online, and is subsidized into affordability. We are not done yet, there is more to come, there is more to do, and we are committed to making sure that we deliver on all of these fronts.
The $72-billion national housing strategy is the start. We are not finished yet. We have announced $40 billion, there was already $72 billion and there is more on the way, because we are committed to making sure that Canadians achieve their right to housing, as we have legislated. We are the first government in the history of this country to legislate the right to housing.