The Affordability Action Council (AAC) is excited to offer our support and congratulations for the Build Canada Homes (BCH) initiative announced by the federal government. We are pleased to see the federal government reclaiming its leadership role in delivering affordable, climate friendly housing.
This initiative is aligned with many of the objectives and values of the AAC, including:
- Asset creation by keeping public land in public hands for housing development
- Recognition that the private sector alone cannot deliver the affordable housing needed for moderate and median income Canadians, nor the deeply affordable housing needed to meet the needs of low and very low income Canadians
- Recognition of the huge potential to develop a made in Canada housing industrial strategy to improve costs, create local steady jobs and produce energy-efficient components
- Recognition of the potential for apprenticeship and training opportunities in supporting the role out of the BCH initiative
Recommendations
The AAC believes the BCH initiative could be transformational in meeting the need for affordable housing. We offer the following recommendations to support BCH in meeting this potential.
- Ensure the BCH initiative prioritizes building the homes Canada needs the most, by prioritizing new homes that are removed from the speculative market by:
- Prioritizing the allocation of the $10billion in low-cost financing for affordable housing to non-market housing providers
- Prioritizing non-market development on public land
- Setting a target for the ramp up of the non-market housing providers needed to deliver the affordable housing Canadians need
This includes funding deeply affordable housing (including social housing), as well as financing cooperatives and other non-profit housing for moderate and middle income households. We were pleased to see the emphasis placed on addressing housing affordability. Increasing the supply of housing developed by the private sector alone, however, will not deliver the depth, scale or diversity of affordable homes needed. The housing shortage in Canada is for social housing, cooperative housing and family–suitable rent regulated apartments that have long wait lists as this stock of homes has not increased in decades while demand has soared. Co-operative and not-for-profit housing developers must be centred in this effort, particularly for moderate and median income households. These non-market housing providers are an essential part of the sector that don’t need to return a profit and can construct homes essentially at cost. This translates into more affordable homes with lower rents compared to the same types of rental units in the private market. A recent study by the Cooperative Housing Federation found that coop rents in five major Canadian cities were on average twenty-five percent lower than “market.” This savings can increase up to thirty percent when built on public land. Further, cooperative housing and non-profit housing are not exposed to speculative market forces and large rent increases, so rents stay relatively stable over the long term and homes are protected from the troubling practice of financialization and renovictions with Canada.
- Ensure the BCH initiative centres community benefits by:
- Requiring community benefits agreements for major BCH projects that include apprenticeship requirements, local hiring targets for equity-deserving groups, and social procurement commitments to support local and diverse businesses
- As a potential target, BCH projects over $5M in value could include community benefits expectations and all projects over $50M in value could include a mandatory CBA requirement
- Ensuring community benefits agreements include commitments to protect existing affordable housing and prevent displacement during development
- Creating accountability mechanisms that include community representation in monitoring and evaluation processes throughout project implementation
The BCH initiative presents a unique opportunity to ensure that the people who need affordable housing can also benefit from the jobs and economic opportunities created while building it. Yet too often, infrastructure investment leads to displacement rather than community wealth-building.
Community benefits agreements provide a policy implementation tool that can make BCH’s commitments tangible on the ground, ensuring accountability to the communities most affected by housing development. The AAC has previously highlighted how an ambitious retrofit strategy can create good jobs for equity-deserving groups through integrated on-the-job training, community-benefit agreements and inclusive workforce development approaches. The same principles should apply to the BCH initiative’s manufacturing and construction activities.
- Ensure the BCH initiative centres energy-efficient and climate-resilient solutions by:
- Prioritizing the development of complete communities near public transit
- Ensuring all construction supported through the BCH initiative meets the highest standards for energy efficiency and climate resilience
The climate and affordability benefits of the ambitious building goals of the BCH initiative will be limited if construction is not carefully located to avoid sprawl and long commute times. Additionally, manufactured homes produced for the BCH initiative must meet the highest standards of energy efficiency to ensure low energy bills, resilience to extreme temperatures and avoidance of future retrofit costs.
Prepared by Cherise Burda, Rosemarie Powell, Josha MacNab and Shaimaa Yassin
