By Joel Weiner
Lowertown is not immune from a growing real estate phenomenon underway for some time across the country: homelessness. One result is that some areas in our neighbourhood can look like campgrounds, when tents are pitched for shelter in parks or other public spaces.
A number of complex and often interrelated facts account for homelessness in Canada. Lately, though, rising rents and housing prices have exacerbated a chronic condition and brought it into sharp relief.
Not surprisingly, then, each of the major parties in the forthcoming federal election has made impressive promises about how it will address the situation if it forms the next government. Whether, how and to what extent remains to be seen in the coming years.
As a service to our readers, The Echo has extracted from the major parties’ platforms their respective positions on housing.
Liberal Party
A Home. For Everyone.
Canadians see owning a home as key to building their future and joining the middle class. But with rent increasing and housing prices continuing to rise, too many young people don’t see a clear path to affording the same lives their parents had. Everyone should have a home to call their own. And we have a three-part housing plan to make it happen.
1.4 million New Homes
We need homes in urban centres that are built for middle class families, with the amenities to match, like accessible child care and public transit. We need affordable housing for vulnerable people like women and children fleeing violence, persons with disabilities, and youth. We need a co-developed housing plan for Indigenous people living in urban, rural, and northern off-reserve communities. And for aging parents and grandparents planning their future, or for newcomers who need more space for a growing family, we need to support multi-generational living to encourage down-sizing and aging well at home.
Protecting Your Rights
The desirability of Canadian homes is attracting profiteers, wealthy corporations, and foreign investors. This is leading to a real problem of underused and vacant housing, rampant speculation, and skyrocketing prices. Homes are for people, not investors.
Conservative Party
It’s time to face the fact: We have a housing crisis in Canada. Affording a home – to rent, let alone to buy – is slipping out of reach of Canadians across our country. The primary cause is that supply simply isn’t keeping up with demand. Governments have not let Canadians build enough housing to keep up with our growing population.
We need action – from all levels of government. We need to treat this like the crisis it is. Years of study and delay will just leave more and more Canadians and newcomers trapped in inadequate or insecure housing. We need shovels in the ground building enough housing not just to keep up with but to get ahead of population growth. We need to ensure that Canadians, first and foremost, can afford the housing that we do have, keeping out foreign speculators, corruption, and laundered money that force up prices. And we need to remove unnecessary roadblocks preventing Canadians from getting mortgages.
Canada’s Conservatives have a plan to make housing more affordable.
To swiftly increase supply, we will implement a plan to build 1 million homes in the next three years.
To do so, we will:
• Leverage federal infrastructure investments to increase housing supply. We will:
° Build public transit infrastructure that connects homes and jobs by bringing public transit to where people are buying homes; and
° Require municipalities receiving federal funding for public transit to increase density near the funded transit;
• Review the extensive real estate portfolio of the federal government – the largest property
owner in the country with over 37,000 buildings – and release at least 15% for housing while improving the Federal Lands Initiative;
• Incent developers to build the housing Canadians both want and need, by:
° Encouraging Canadians to invest in rental housing by extending the ability to defer capital
gains tax when selling a rental property and reinvesting in rental housing, something that is currently excluded; and
° Exploring converting unneeded office space to housing.
• Continue the Conservative commitment to Reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous Peoples by
enacting a “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” strategy – long called for by Indigenous housing advocates, who have been ignored by this Liberal government;
° Canada’s Conservatives are committed to putting a stop to federal paternalism and instead
partnering with Indigenous communities and empowering Indigenous Peoples with the
autonomy to meet their own housing needs.
• Enhance the viability of using Community Land Trusts for affordable housing by creating an
incentive for corporations and private landowners to donate property to Land Trusts for the
development of affordable housing.
° The incentive will mirror that which exists for donating land to ecological reserves.
TACKLE HOME PRICES
To root out the corrupt activities that drive up real estate prices and put homeownership out of reach, we will:
• Implement comprehensive changes to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, and give FINTRAC, law enforcement, and prosecutors the tools necessary to identify, halt, and prosecute money-laundering in Canadian real estate markets
• Establish a federal Beneficial Ownership Registry for residential property.
• Closely examine the findings and recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry into Money
Laundering in British Columbia, which is doing important work, and quickly implement
recommendations at the federal level.
To arrest and reverse the inflationary impacts of foreign buyers and speculation in the housing
market, we will ensure that housing in Canada is truly for Canadian citizens and residents first.
The Liberals are on record stating “we’re a very safe market for foreign investment but we’re not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing.” This must change.
We need a real estate market that serves the interests of everyday Canadians: the young family who needs more space for their kids, the recent university grad trying to find an apartment in the city, the tradesperson moving to a new community for work, the retired empty-nesters wanting to downsize without losing all their home equity to pay for an overpriced condo – all are underserved by Canada’s lack of affordable housing options.
We will:
• Ban foreign investors not living in or moving to Canada from buying homes here for a two year
period after which it will be reviewed.
• Instead, encourage foreign investment in purpose-built rental housing that is affordable to Canadians.
To address homelessness, we will:
• Re-implement the Housing First approach, which has been watered down by the current federal government, to aid in the fight against Canada’s addictions crisis.
• Revise the federal government’s substance abuse policy framework to make recovery its overarching goal.
• Invest $325 million over the next three years to create 1,000 residential drug treatment beds and build 50 recovery community centres across the country.
• Support innovative approaches to address the crises of mental health challenges and addiction, such as land-based treatment programs developed and managed by Indigenous communities as part of a plan to enhance the delivery of culturally appropriate addictions treatment and prevention services in First Nations communities with high needs.
To make mortgages more affordable, we will:
• Encourage a new market in seven- to ten-year mortgages to provide stability both for first-time
home buyers and lenders, opening another secure path to homeownership for Canadians, and
reducing the need for mortgage stress tests.
• Remove the requirement to conduct a stress test when a homeowner renews a mortgage with
another lender instead of only when staying with their current lender, as is the case today. This
will increase competition and help homeowners access more affordable options.
• Increase the limit on eligibility for mortgage insurance and index it to home price inflation,
allowing those in high-priced real estate markets with less than a 20% down-payment an
opportunity at home-ownership.
• Fix the mortgage stress test to stop discriminating against small business owners, contractors and other non-permanent employees including casual workers.
Canada’s Conservatives will never tax Canadians’ capital gains on the sale of their principal residence, something many within the Liberal party are threatening to do.
Green Party
Addressing the affordable housing and homelessness crises
Adequate housing is a fundamental human right. Canada has recognized this in the National Housing Strategy Act, yet more and more Canadians are struggling to afford housing. There is an affordable housing and homelessness crisis in Canada. Even before the pandemic, 1.6 million Canadians lived in unsuitable, inadequate, or unaffordable housing and an estimated 2.4 million households experienced core housing need in 2020. On any given night, over 35,000 Canadians may be experiencing homelessness. Women, low-income workers, Black and Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities and people of colour have been among hardest hit by income and job loss during the pandemic and continue to fall further and further behind. While short-term pandemic benefits offered adequate income replacement for some low-income tenants, others have had their income dramatically reduced, are unable to pay their full rent, are falling into arrears and facing the threat of eviction.
The Green Party of Canada is committed to making the right to adequate housing a reality. A Green government will:
● Declare housing affordability and homelessness a national emergency
● Redefine affordable housing using a better, updated formula, that accounts for regional variations across the country
● Immediately appoint the Federal Housing Advocate, as established in the National Housing Strategy Act. Support for renters
● Establish a national moratorium on evictions
● Maintain a moratorium on evictions until the pandemic is over and for a reasonable time thereafter, in cooperation with provincial governments.
● Create national standards to establish rent and vacancy controls Green Innovation: Implementing a retroactive Residential Tenant Support Benefit A Green government will provide a retroactive residential arrears assistance program to protect Canadians at risk of eviction or of being driven into homelessness due to accumulated rent arrears, as recommended by the National Right to Housing Network (NRHN) and the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation (CERA).
● Strengthen regulation to limit foreign investment and end predatory practices in residential real estate
● Raise the “empty home” tax for foreign and corporate residential property owners who leave buildings and units vacant.
● Assess the role of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in Canada’s housing market.
● Close tax haven loopholes that allow foreign investors to hide the names of beneficial owners of properties in Canada.
● Crack down on money laundering in Canadian real estate. Investment in housing
● Reinvest in affordable, non-profit, co-operative and supportive housing
● Protect the existing stock of affordable housing by funding the purchase of buildings by non-profit and cooperative affordable housing organizations.
● Expand the Rapid Housing Initiative to bring new affordable and supportive housing onstream without delay. With this expansion, more quality projects with funding and agreements already in place can quickly become affordable or supportive housing.
● Invest in construction and operation of 50,000 supportive housing units over 10 years.
● Build and acquire a minimum of 300,000 units of deeply affordable non-market, co-op and non-profit housing over a decade.
● Create a Canada Co-op Housing Strategy and update the mechanisms for financing co-op housing, in partnership with CMHC, co-op societies, credit unions and other lenders.
● Require covenants to ensure that subsidized construction remains affordable over the long term
● Restore quality, energy efficient housing for seniors, people with special needs and low-income families by providing financing to non-profit housing organizations, cooperatives, and social housing to build and restore quality and affordable housing.
● Implement integrated housing, so that everyone can afford to live in the communities in which they work and under quality conditions. Restore tax incentives for building purpose-built rental housing, and provide tax credits for gifts of lands, or of land and buildings, to community land trusts to provide affordable housing.
● Remove the “deemed” GST whenever a developer with empty condo units places them on the market as rentals.
● Re-focus the core mandate of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) on supporting the development of affordable, non-market and cooperative housing, as opposed to its current priority of supporting Canadian lenders to de-risk investment in housing ownership. With many housing markets demonstrably overvalued, and home ownership rates among the highest in the world, individual home ownership should not be the preoccupation of a public service housing agency and a national housing strategy.
● Appoint a Minister of Housing to meet the needs of affordable housing that are unique to each province, oversee its implementation in collaboration with provincial ministers, and build on other aspects of the housing and homelessness crisis in Canada to tackle these issues.
● Increase access to housing for people with disabilities.
● Require that housing developments that receive federal funding must ensure that 30% of all units in each development must be deeply affordable and/or available to people with disabilities and special needs.
Develop a strategy to face housing challenges in rural areas Ensure access to housing for Indigenous Peoples
1. Guided by First Nations, Inuit and Metis Nation, develop inclusive and culturally appropriate Urban Indigenous Housing Strategies – for Indigenous Peoples and 39 by Indigenous Peoples – as proposed by the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association’s Indigenous Caucus.
2. Reinvest in housing for Indigenous communities
● Change the legislation that prevents Indigenous organizations from accessing financing through CMHC to invest in self-determined housing needs.
● Allocate funding towards urban Indigenous housing providers.
● Develop and implement an Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy.
● Ensure that all housing in Indigenous communities is built following principles laid out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
● Leverage federal lands and real property for transfer to off-reserve Indigenous organizations to create housing and economic development opportunities.
● Assist urban and rural Indigenous people in identifying emergency accommodations and affordable housing options for youth, Elders, and vulnerable populations.
● Establish a “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” housing support program for all off-reserve and urban Indigenous communities, and include off-reserve Status and non-Status Indigenous Peoples.
Confronting Youth Homelessness and Unaffordable Housing Greens know that youth homelessness is a real problem that requires sustainable and compassionate solutions. Children and youth require stability and safety, yet in any given year, there are between 35,000 – 40,000 youth experiencing homelessness in Canada. Across the country, 20% of the homeless population are young people. When paired with other Green policies targeting young people, youth homelessness will receive the necessary attention and support it deserves.
A Green government will:
● Support existing youth shelters and other infrastructure through federal grants.
● Invest in the creation of new youth shelters in urban and small urban centers across the country which would work on a needs-driven and community-centric approach.
● Remove shelter maximum stays for youth.
● Provide on-site and remote access guidance counselling and therapy for youth suffering from homelessness.
● Provide optional relocation services for rural youth suffering from homelessness to ensure that they have access to youth shelters and other infrastructure.
● Support and invest in the co-operative model for youth housing. Provide services and supports to the homeless community.
1. Provide expanded mental health services for the homeless community.
● Increased access to high-quality mental health services would recognize the intersections between those experiencing homelessness and those experiencing mental health issues.
2. Implement programs that direct funds to municipalities providing support for people in the homeless community who use drugs.
● Support Housing First initiatives and other successful models of improving health outcomes.
Build and acquire a minimum of 300,000 units of deeply affordable non-market, co-op and non-profit housing over a decade. 38 ● Create a Canada Co-op Housing Strategy and update the mechanisms for financing co-op housing, in partnership with CMHC, co-op societies, credit unions and other lenders.
● Require covenants to ensure that subsidized construction remains affordable over the long term
● Restore quality, energy efficient housing for seniors, people with special needs and low-income families, by providing financing to non-profit housing organizations, cooperatives, and social housing to build and restore quality and affordable housing.
● Implement integrated housing, so that everyone can afford to live in the communities in which they work and under quality conditions. Restore tax incentives for building purpose-built rental housing, and provide tax credits for gifts of lands, or of land and buildings, to community land trusts to provide affordable housing.
● Remove the “deemed” GST whenever a developer with empty condo units places them on the market as rentals.
● Re-focus the core mandate of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) on supporting the development of affordable, non-market and cooperative housing, as opposed to its current priority of supporting Canadian lenders to de-risk investment in housing ownership. With many housing markets demonstrably overvalued, and home ownership rates among the highest in the world, individual home ownership should not be the preoccupation of a public service housing agency and a national housing strategy.
● Appoint a Minister of Housing to meet the needs of affordable housing that are unique to each province, oversee its implementation in collaboration with provincial ministers, and build on other aspects of the housing and homelessness crisis in Canada to tackle these issues.
● Increase access to housing for people with disabilities.
● Require that housing developments that receive federal funding must ensure that 30% of all units in each development must be deeply affordable and/or available to people with disabilities and special needs.
● Develop a strategy to face housing challenges in rural areas Ensure access to housing for Indigenous Peoples 1. Guided by First Nations, Inuit and Metis Nation, develop inclusive and culturally appropriate Urban Indigenous Housing Strategies – for Indigenous Peoples and 39 by Indigenous Peoples – as proposed by the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association’s Indigenous Caucus. 2. Reinvest in housing for Indigenous communities
● Change the legislation that prevents Indigenous organizations from accessing financing through CMHC to invest in self-determined housing needs.
● Allocate funding towards urban Indigenous housing providers.
● Develop and implement an Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy.
● Ensure that all housing in Indigenous communities is built following principles laid out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
● Leverage federal lands and real property for transfer to off-reserve Indigenous organizations to create housing and economic development opportunities.
● Assist urban and rural Indigenous people in identifying emergency accommodations and affordable housing options for youth, Elders, 2SLGBTQQIA+, and vulnerable populations.
● Establish a “For Indigenous, By Indigenous” housing support program for all off-reserve and urban Indigenous communities, and include off-reserve Status and non-Status Indigenous Peoples. Confronting Youth Homelessness and Unaffordable Housing Greens know that youth homelessness is a real problem that requires sustainable and compassionate solutions. Children and youth require stability and safety, yet in any given year, there are between 35,000 – 40,000 youth experiencing homelessness in Canada.11 Across the country, 20% of the homeless population are young people. When paired with other Green policies targeting young people, youth homelessness will receive the necessary attention and support it deserves. A Green government will:
● Support existing youth shelters and other infrastructure through federal grants.
● Invest in the creation of new youth shelters in urban and small urban centers across the country which would work on a needs-driven and community-centric approach.
● Remove shelter maximum stays for youth. 11 https://homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/attachments/WithoutAHome-final.pdf 40
● Provide on-site and remote access guidance counselling and therapy for youth suffering from homelessness.
● Provide optional relocation services for rural youth suffering from homelessness to ensure that they have access to youth shelters and other infrastructure.
● Support and invest in the co-operative model for youth housing. Provide services and supports to the homeless community 1. Provide expanded mental health services for the homeless community.
● Increased access to high-quality mental health services would recognize the intersections between those experiencing homelessness and those experiencing mental health issues. 2. Implement programs that direct funds to municipalities providing support for people in the homeless community who use drugs.
● Support Housing First initiatives and other successful models of improving health outcomes.
New Democratic Party
Making sure everyone can afford a place to call home
Owning a home has become an impossible dream for too many Canadians. Finding a decent place to rent is out-of-reach. Everyone should have the right to a safe and affordable place to call home. Working people should be able to afford to live close to their workplaces, including in the heart of our biggest cities. Young people should be able to stay in the neighbourhoods they’ve grown up in. And seniors should never be forced out of the communities that they’ve spent their lives in.
But for too many families, safe and affordable housing is increasingly out of reach, thanks to skyrocketing rents, demo-victions and ballooning home prices. The pandemic has only made things worse for people on the edge, with too many families struggling to make rent or mortgage payments during the crisis. Parents lie awake at night, worrying about how they can afford the family home, as costs keep going up but paycheques don’t keep up. And huge numbers of young people are being forced to give up on the dream of ever owning their own house.
Canada is in the midst of a national housing crisis impacting every area of the country: Average rents rose in every single province last year, and 1.6 million Canadian households spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing. Canada has the fastest growing house prices in all of the G7, a trend that shows no signs of slowing.
What this means in real terms is that families in our communities are facing constant stress and impossible choices between rent or food; living in substandard housing or relocating out of their community; or worse, the real risk of homelessness.
The worry and anxiety that people feel today is the result of the bad choices that Liberal and Conservative governments have made.
The Liberals have neglected the housing crisis in Canada for too long, turning their backs on families that are struggling to stay in the communities where they want to live and work. Even with modest new announcements to try to fill the gaps, the reality is that their housing program is too small to make a real difference for most Canadians. The Liberal government is telling Canadian families that they’re just going to have to wait longer for help, struggle more every month, and settle for less.
New Democrats believe that it’s time to help people – now. We have an ambitious plan that will make a difference in every community in our country – because finding a good, affordable place to live shouldn’t be like winning the lottery. It’s time to relieve the stress and worry that people feel by choosing to make it easier to rent and buy a home.
A major part of the long-term solution to the problem is to ensure that more affordable rental units are built across the country. One in three Canadians is a renter. In many cities, what few affordable apartments there are get snapped up quickly, and people end up living in either inadequate housing or simply forced to spend a huge chunk of their income on rent.
After six years in government, the Liberal plan is simply inadequate compared to the scale of the housing crisis Canadians are facing. We need to take urgent action now towards an ambitious plan to build affordable places to live in every community across the country.
That’s why a New Democrat government will create at least 500,000 units of quality, affordable housing in the next ten years, with half of that done within five years. This will be achieved with the right mix of effective measures that work in partnership with provinces and municipalities, build capacity for social, community, and affordable housing providers, to provide rental support for co-ops, and meet environmental energy efficiency goals. This ambitious plan will create thousands of jobs in communities all across the country, jump-starting the economic recovery, and helping Canadians get the affordable housing they need.
In order to kick-start the construction of co-ops, social and non-profit housing and break the logjam that has prevented these groups from accessing housing funding, we will set up dedicated fast-start funds to streamline the application process and help communities get the expertise and assistance they need to get projects off the ground now, not years from now. We’ll mobilize federal resources and lands for these projects, turning unused and under-used properties into vibrant new communities.
A New Democrat government will also spur the construction of affordable homes by waiving the federal portion of the GST/HST on the construction of new affordable rental units – a simple change that will help get new units built faster and keep them affordable for the long term.
These measures will help address the housing crisis at the source, but we also need to make sure that families that are hurting get help now – especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Families do not have years to wait, when every day is a struggle and a constant worry. That’s why we’ll provide immediate relief for families that are struggling to afford rent in otherwise suitable housing, while we bring forward long-term solutions to the housing affordability crisis.
While making affordable rental housing more available is critical, New Democrats believe that the dream of homeownership shouldn’t be forever out of reach for Canadian families. That’s why we will re-introduce 30-year terms to CMHC insured mortgages on entry-level homes for first time home buyers. This will allow for smaller monthly payments, freeing up funds to help make ends meet for young families. We’ll also give people a hand with closing costs by doubling the Home Buyer’s Tax Credit to $1,500.
For Canadians who are open to innovative paths to home ownership, a New Democrat government will provide resources to facilitate co-housing, such as model co-ownership agreements and connections to local resources, and ease access to financing by offering CMHC-backed co-ownership mortgages.
Big money investors are driving up the costs of houses. No one can win a bidding war against investors with deep pockets who are looking to turn a profit, not build a neighbourhood. To help put an end to speculation that’s fuelling high housing prices, we’ll put in place a 20% Foreign Buyer’s tax on the sale of homes to individuals who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent residents. New Democrats will also fight money laundering, which fuels organized crime and drives up housing prices. We will work with the provinces to create a public beneficial ownership registry to increase transparency about who owns properties, and require reporting of suspicious transactions in order to help find and stop money laundering.