Finance committee  The Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada has advanced a model for a new co-op supply program that would involve the CMHC's investing in a community housing sector-controlled facility to get that money where it's needed most, which is with community housing developers so that

Finance committee  You've caught me on a day when my frustration with the CMHC is at an all-time high. It's managed to create what I regard, and what many community housing developers regard, as the perfect mortgage product. The MLI select mortgage is flexible in its amortization, its term and its

Finance committee  I think you've pointed out one of the central dilemmas of how the rental housing market operates in the context of what we call the financialization of housing. If you have a rent control system in place but not a vacancy control system, then what you've created in the housing s

Finance committee  I agree with you that the definition of affordability has become a lot more elastic as funds have been scarce to create supply programs for co-op and non-profit housing. The only way to generate deep and continuing affordability is to reduce the capital cost of developing new hou

Finance committee  I'll start with the second one. It's critical. The last prime minister to launch a unilateral, federal co-op housing program was Brian Mulroney, so it's been far too long since we built co-ops to contribute to communities and build strong, diverse, supportive homes for people of

Finance committee  Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm especially pleased to see my own member of Parliament here. That must be a good omen. I have to say that I love the open mike part of your format. I think it's a real improvement in the committee process

Human Resources committee  It's absolutely critical. I would say that seven or eight years ago we could have said that free land was enough to to generate the viability you need to create significant affordability. That's no longer the case. We developed four sites made available to us by the City of Vanc

Human Resources committee  I think the answer is in the question: Those funds have to flow immediately. The two things that community housing developers need to have access to are, first of all, risk capital, and, second, patient capital. As I've said in another conversation, CMHC at times is a lot of use

Human Resources committee  I agree with all of those. I would add family-sized housing, housing appropriate for families, and permanent long-term affordability.

Human Resources committee  Whether you're developing a non-profit co-op or a high-end, purpose-built rental or strata, the cost of development and the impact of development costs are the same. I'll give you one concrete example. The City of Victoria, just in the last month, adopted a very progressive zoni

Human Resources committee  Well, the short answer is that you need to be prepared to invest enough money in capital and operating subsidies to plug the equity gap. In our community land trust, 40% of the new homes we develop are either two- or three-bedroom homes intended for the families you're speaking

Human Resources committee  Am I ever glad you asked that question. I was hoping we'd all get a chance to answer your first question, because is there any higher or better use for housing than to provide safe, secure, affordable housing in a community-based setting? Anyway, the answer to that requires someo

Human Resources committee  I would say that it can, but the key factor will be whether it could be effectively stacked with other programs. The contribution levels that we're talking about under some of the scenarios we've seen sketched out wouldn't be enough to plug the entire equity gap between economic

Human Resources committee  I certainly think that's a valid point to be making. A lot of people like to wax nostalgic about some of the older tax incentive programs—the MURBs and the ARPs—but if you wander around your community today and try to find one of those developments, they've typically been flipped

Human Resources committee  Thank you so much for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the proposed housing accelerator fund. My name is Thom Armstrong. I'm the CEO of the Co-operative Housing Federation of British Columbia. CHF BC is a province-wide federation of housing co-ops. We se