Housing activists banking on election
Many low-income Canadians face crisis without federal investment
While so much of this federal election campaign has focused on seducing, frightening or pandering to the middle class for votes, antipoverty activists have been trying to flag an issue that could make or break the futures of tens of thousands of low-income Canadians: the impending social housing crisis.
More than 100,000 povertystricken households across the country are at risk of losing their rental subsidies in the next four years. And unless the government Canadians elect on Monday reinvests significantly in this area, say social housing advocates, more than a quarter of a million lowincome households could eventually see their rents double or triple.
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, housing critic for the New Democratic Party, has raised it repeatedly in the House of Commons and more recently as she campaigns in Hochelaga, where she estimates 300 families could lose their rent subsidies by 2020.
For these families, it is not a question of a little belt-tightening, she said.
Boutin-Sweet gives the example of one of her constituents, a chronically ill single woman who is suddenly facing a rent hike of $200 more a month; about double the rent she struggles to pay now.
“She has no idea what she will do,” Boutin-Sweet said.
“She can’t work, because she is ill. As it is, she never goes out, she wears second-hand clothing. ... There is no fat to cut anywhere in her budget. Where is she going to find decent housing for a couple of hundred dollars a month? And this is happening across the country.” The crisis was foreseeable. In the 1970s, as governments around the world began to recognize adequate housing as a fundamental human right, Canada’s federal government, under Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, introduced a subsidized housing program so that low-income earners could afford to live in decent homes without skimping on essentials, like groceries.
Between 1970 and 1994, the federal government (through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) signed long-term mortgage agreements with nonprofit groups, co-operatives and provinces that eventually created about 620,000 “social housing” units. Low-income tenants in social housing would not have to pay more than 30 per cent of their income on rent.
But the federal government committed to subsidizing rents only until the mortgages on these buildings were paid off. Mortgage lengths varied from 35 to 50 years. It was expected the housing providers would then be able to afford to take over the subsidies.
Now that the deals are coming to an end, however, it is becoming clear that many of these groups cannot afford to do that. For one thing, the buildings are now older and require maintenance and renovation to remain habitable.
By the end of this year, if nothing changes, an estimated 25,000 poor households are expected to lose this essential funding, and probably their homes, according to the housing coalition FRAPRU.
Another 91,000 will be in that situation by 2018 if the government does not reinvest substantially, it says.
In Quebec, FRAPRU estimates that 5,200 social housing units will lose funding in 2015, another 5,150 in 2016 and 5,900 in 2,017, and so on.
In Montreal, where 23 per cent of households get by on incomes of less than $20,000 a year, the crisis will be keenly felt. At last count, 22,000 households that qualified for social housing were on waiting lists on the island of Montreal. About 2,000 units become available each year.
FRAPRU began pushing the Liberals and the NDP to make firm commitments on social housing since long before this campaign began.
François Saillant, coordinator at the housing coalition, dismisses the Conservatives out of hand on this issue. And since the Bloc Québécois and the Greens are not going to form the government, he said, his group has focused its limited resources on the NDP and Liberals.
The Conservative party has made no commitment to extend financing of existing social housing, and will let the mortgage deals expire. The Conservatives would invest $250 million per year until 2019 in “affordable housing”.
“The Conservative party’s record on housing has been a disaster,” Saillant said. He says 4,100 social housing units in Quebec lost their federal subsidies during Conservative Leader Stephen Harper’s last mandate, and 26,500 more will by 2020 if the Conservatives are returned to power.
He is pleased that both the Liberals and the NDP have promised to prolong the subsidies program for the 585,000 social housing units that remain in Canada. But he is concerned about the lack of firm commitments to create new social housing.
The federal government stopped funding new social housing in 1994, under then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberals. In 2002, the Chrétien government introduced a new “affordable housing” program that encouraged provinces to build low-cost housing. That program gets $250 million in federal funding a year. Housing groups have long denounced that program as woefully inadequate.
In Quebec, where activists say 50,000 new units are required to meet the need, that program currently enables only 700 units to be created per year.
Also some of the money goes to private developers, who do not necessarily rent to householders in greatest need.
Liberal housing critic Adam Vaughan, has also acknowledged the severity of the housing crisis if substantial investments are not made in renovation of existing social housing stock and in building new public housing. He says the goal for the Liberals is to be building 25,000 units of housing per year by the end of the decade, although it is not clear when that rate of building would begin.
“We’re not going to end homelessness with anything less than 25,000 units per year. Anything less than that and we’re just treading water,” Vaughan said recently in an interview with The Homeless Hub, an Internet-based research group on homelessness.
The NDP has promised to create 10,000 new “affordable” rental units over the first four years of a mandate. But Saillant says the party’s promise to spend $500 million annually is far from enough, and it should be reserved for co-ops and non-profit housing groups.
Saillant is less impressed by the Liberals’ promise to invest $19.7 billion over 10 years in social infrastructure. He notes that the party has really only pledged to put $1.7 billion into the fund in each of the first two years of its mandate and $1.2 billion in the next two.
And that money will be divided up to pay for all kinds of promises, Saillant added, not only to build new affordable housing and prolong existing subsidies, but also for seniors’ residents, preschool programs, daycares and cultural and recreational facilities.
“Considering the other priorities identified by the Liberal party, there will be hardly anything left for subsidizing new social housing.”
The NDP’s housing commitments have been lauded in other corners. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities recently issued a statement praising the NDP for “setting the bar for other parties to meet” on this issue.
But even the NDP’s Boutin-Sweet acknowledges that her party’s pledge, which she says is better than the Conservatives and the Liberals, is not adequate to meet the need.
“It’s a start. We are at least keeping the money in the system and stopping the hemorrhaging.”
She can’t work, because she is ill. As it is, she never goes out, she wears second-hand clothing. ... There is no fat to cut anywhere in her budget.