Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Humber River—Black Creek.
I am very pleased to be participating in the debate and to speak about our government's efforts to fight homelessness. I am certain that all my colleagues agree that safe housing is vital for the well-being of Canadians and their families. We understand that affordable housing plays an important role in the fight against poverty and homelessness, two issues that require more than just an improvised solution. That is why we are not managing the homelessness issue on an ad hoc basis. Instead, we are developing long-term solutions to prevent and reduce these challenges.
Resolving the problem of affordable housing is of the utmost importance to Canadians. For many of us, it is easy to take our homes for granted. We sometimes forget all too readily that some Canadians are not in the same situation as we are and live in fear of losing their homes.
Poverty has significant repercussions for all aspects of our society. It tends to affect seniors, members of first nations, veterans, children of single mothers or mothers fleeing violence and people who cannot find work in their field even if they have a college or university degree. Some of these people are experiencing homelessness just because their economic, family or social situation has put them at a disadvantage since birth.
The fact is that we had to act swiftly because millions of Canadians were living in poverty and sometimes had trouble getting enough food and finding affordable housing. That is why, in 2017, the Government of Canada announced a $2.2-billion investment over 10 years through the national housing strategy. This investment will extend and expand federal homelessness programs.
In 2019, we launched Reaching Home, Canada's homelessness strategy. This program supports the objectives of the national housing strategy, aiming to help those Canadians most at risk to maintain safe, stable and affordable housing, and to eliminate chronic homelessness across Canada. Reaching Home is a community funding program that supports urban, indigenous, rural and remote communities to help them meet local needs in the fight against homelessness.
In the first six months, the program invested in 1,200 projects across Canada. It was broadened in 2020. Our government collaborated with the communities to develop and implement community projects and plans based on science that aimed for real results. This results-based approach keeps decision-making at the local level and gives communities more flexibility to respond to local priorities, including preventing homelessness, and offer programs designed to meet the needs of specific populations, like young people, indigenous peoples, and women and children who are fleeing violence.
Now, let us talk about our most recent investments in the Reaching Home strategy. Budget 2021 proposes to allocate an additional $567 million to this strategy over two years, beginning in 2022-23. This amount will complement the investment of over $299 million in this strategy that our government announced in the 2020 fall economic statement. It also complements an investment of over $400 million in additional federal funding, the purpose of which was to support the homeless services sector's response during COVID-19 in order to prevent homelessness.
The COVID-19 pandemic put a lot of pressure on Canada's homeless services sector, which had to transform its way of delivering services to prevent outbreaks among the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless.
Our government therefore plans to allocate additional funding to the Reaching Home strategy for two more years, as of 2022-23. The goal is to help communities to continue to safely serve the homeless and prevent homelessness among at-risk Canadians until the pandemic begins to wane. I would like to add that, given the progress that we have made in our commitment to do more, the government announced that it wants to eliminate chronic homelessness in Canada.
I would now like to briefly outline some other investments our government has made to support housing and affordable housing. First of all, budget 2021 proposes to provide an additional $2.5 billion over seven years to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation beginning in 2021 and 2022. This includes $1.5 billion for the rapid housing initiative, $600 million over seven years to renew and expand the affordable housing innovation fund, $315 million over seven years through the Canada housing benefit, to increase direct financial assistance for low-income women and children fleeing violence, and $118 million over seven years through the federal community housing initiative, to support community housing providers.
Budget 2021 also proposes to advance and reallocate $1.3 billion, on a cash basis, of previously announced funding. This includes $750 million under the national housing co-investment fund to accelerate the creation of 3,400 new units and the repair of 13,700 units, $250 million under the national housing co-investment fund to support construction, repair, and operating costs, and $300 million from the rental construction financing initiative, which will be allocated to support the conversion of vacant commercial property into housing, which will also help a great deal.
I think it is clear that our government continues to do what is necessary to address homelessness. We are clearly demonstrating that we are developing and implementing long-term solutions to prevent and end chronic homelessness in Canada, once and for all.