A welcome shift on housing

Finding a decent place to live isn’t easy in an expensive city like Toronto. For those near the bottom of the income scale, it can mean putting up with substandard housing — or ending up on the street.

The Trudeau government’s brand-new national housing strategy could be a game-changer for many — if it actually delivers on this ambitious plan. And in this case, it’s an awfully big if.

On the face of it, the strategy amounts to a welcome sea-change in federal policy. For many years, especially during the Harper years, Ottawa largely abdicated its role in housing. Now it’s jumping back in with both feet.

The headline promise is a pledge to spend $40 billion over10 years on building more affordable housing, renovating the existing stock, making it easier for lower-income people to pay the rent and reducing chronic homelessness by half.

These are bold promises, backed up by ringing rhetoric from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who proclaimed on Wednesday that “housing rights are human rights . . . everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to call home.”

This is an admirable commitment. But governments — including Liberal governments — have made big statements about housing in the past and then failed to carry through. The question now is whether this government will stay the course.

At this point, there are some big question marks over the plan.

To start with, it’s not entirely clear how much of the promised $40 billion is new money. Some of it is accounted for by $11.2 billion the government included for housing in its 2016 budget. Part of it is money “repurposed” from other housing programs. And some depends on provinces and territories matching federal money; they will have to reach detailed agreements and come up with their share of the funding.

It’s also not clear how the money will be spread out over the next decade. If it doesn’t kick in until years down the road, the chances are that much greater it will be derailed.

And the most innovative part of the strategy won’t appear for another three and a half years — until April 2021. That’s when the government plans to bring in a new “Canada Housing Benefit” that would give eligible people an average of $2,500 a year for housing costs. By 2028, says the government, it will help some 300,000 families a year pay the rent.

This is the kind of portable benefit that housing advocates have long been calling for. But under the federal strategy it won’t kick in until after the next federal election (scheduled for 2019), and it will be contingent on provinces agreeing to pick up half the cost. Trudeau says it will take that long to figure out the details and negotiate agreements. Fair enough, but a lot could go off the rails while all that is being worked out.

Overall, says the government, its strategy would remove 530,000 households from “housing need” — by making sure they have access to decent, affordable shelter.

Akey element is a $15.9-billion housing fund that will build 60,000 new affordable housing units and provide loans and grants to repair another 240,000 units across the country.

From a policy point of view, this isn’t as sexy as a brand-new housing benefit, but it can’t come soon enough in a city like Toronto. It’s a scandal that Toronto Community Housing has had to board up hundreds of units simply because there isn’t enough money to make them habitable.

City council has ordered a halt to such closures, but Toronto needs $1.6 billion for repairs over the next decade and it’s not clear where that will come from. Mayor John Tory should be at the head of the line, making sure the province is tapping into these new federal funds and directing them to the city.

Still, even with all these questions it’s refreshing to see a federal government thinking big and finally putting housing back on the national agenda.

It will take a lot of work to make sure the promises turn into reality. But without the political will to get it done, even more families would find decent housing out of reach. Finally, there’s a government showing leadership in this vital area.

There are a lot of questions about the Trudeau government’s housing strategy, but it’s good to see Ottawa finally putting housing back on the national agenda