Latest news with #BuildCanadaHomes
Montreal Gazette
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Montreal Gazette
Opinion: Three critical caveats must be addressed by Build Canada Homes program
Op Eds Montreal has historically been a place where it was possible to find an affordable home. Yet just before July 1, Quebec's traditional moving day, the city reported that approximately 270 households were still struggling to find suitable housing. The situation risks becoming far worse. The federal government's Build Canada Homes initiative is a welcome and long-overdue response to a crisis that's been decades in the making. Done right, it has the potential to tackle Canada's chronic housing shortage, address the growing social concern of homelessness, and stimulate the economy in meaningful, long-term ways. This initiative is presently being crafted. For it to succeed, three critical caveats must be addressed — urgently and simultaneously — before it becomes an example of political ambition that over-promises and under-delivers. First: Credibility hinges on visible changes in our communities. No housing plan will have credibility if the number of Canadians who experience homelessness continues to rise. Walk through any urban centre, large or small, and you'll see it. The ecosystem of care is bursting at the seams. The cost of inaction is being measured in human suffering. The government must work with civil society to reduce homelessness. That must be the top priority. Second: We must build the right kind of housing. Build Canada Homes cannot simply be a stimulus for the construction sector. It must deliver the housing we need — mostly non-market housing that middle- and lower-income Canadians can afford without sacrificing food, medication or transportation. Too many Canadians live on the edge of eviction. According to the latest figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, over 1.5 million Canadian renter households spend more than 40 per cent of their income on rent — a number that's increased dramatically in recent years. That's not just precarious; it's unsustainable. We must prioritize deeply affordable rental housing, co-operative models, and supportive housing for people exiting homelessness or institutions. These are stability engines. Without them, we're just putting patches on a costly emergency response system. Third: We must not let bureaucracy become a bottleneck. There is a risk in large-scale federal initiatives of inadvertently slowing down progress rather than speeding it up. A new agency, with new rules and a new approval process, may leave many shovel-ready projects in limbo. This would be the worst possible outcome at the worst possible time. Non-profit housing organizations, Indigenous housing providers and community developers across the country have plans ready to go. What they need is a fast lane. The federal government must work with provinces and municipalities to streamline approvals and remove unnecessary delays. Build Canada Homes must not create new webs of compliance, reporting or overlapping jurisdiction. There is a way to both jump-start progress and add long-term coherence to the effort: Appoint a federal commissioner on homelessness to lead the charge in prevention and co-ordination. This should not be a symbolic role. It should be a boots-on-the-ground leadership position with authority, accountability and a direct line to the federal housing minister. The commissioner's mandate should be the development and implementation of an emergency homelessness prevention plan, working in tandem with provinces and territories. Prevention is our best hope. The role must focus upstream — on eviction prevention, rent supplement programs and mental health supports for those on the brink of losing their housing. Most people don't fall into homelessness overnight. They teeter on the edge for months, sometimes years, struggling under the weight of high rent, unstable work and social isolation. Helping people stay housed isn't just the right thing to do — it is far more cost-effective than trying to help them once they're on the street. Build Canada Homes can be the catalyst Canadians are hoping for. However, it must be a co-ordinated, compassionate and credible effort that tackles the housing crisis from all sides. Reduce homelessness. Build the right kind of housing. Avoid bureaucratic logjams. Ensure that the program protects the most vulnerable among us. Because a housing plan that doesn't start with people isn't a plan at all.
Vancouver Sun
26-06-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
Failed New Zealand scheme is cautionary tale for Carney's homebuilding agency: report
OTTAWA — Researchers with the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) say Canada's new federal homebuilding agency is likely to overpromise and underdeliver, drawing a cautionary tale from down under. The free-market think tank argues in a new study that New Zealand's now-defunct homebuilding scheme KiwiBuild, a signature policy of Jacinda Ardern's Labour government, shows why government bureaucrats shouldn't try to play real estate developer. 'New Zealand's experience highlights the limits of government intervention in the real estate market, especially in terms of resource allocation,' write co-authors Gabriel Giguère, Yassine Benabid and Renaud Brossard. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Brossard told the National Post he was struck by the similarities between KiwiBuild and the Liberal government's Build Canada Homes. 'If you look at government programs that have been done through out the world, this is probably the closest thing to what (Prime Minister) Mark Carney's pitching,' said Brossard. KiwiBuild launched in 2018 with the lofty goal of building 100,000 affordable housing units in a decade. It would never come anywhere near meeting this target, completing just 2,389 units by the end of its last full year of activity in 2024. The program was slammed by both politicians and pundits as a 'complete disaster' , contributing to Ardern's fall from global progressive darling to her abrupt resignation in early 2023. By one estimate, KiwiBuild would have taken 436 years to hit the original target of 100,000 homes. Brossard said that one critical mistake that KiwiBuild administrators made was relying too heavily on prefabricated homes. 'In some of the areas where they were hoping to build homes for (KiwiBuild), they found that shipping in a prefab home was actually more expensive than just building one in situ,' said Brossard. Carney has promised billions in subsidies to prefabricated and modular home builders, as part of his plan to double the rate of housing construction and build 500,000 new homes a year within a decade. Brossard and his co-authors report that KiwiBuild's prefab homes were often inferior to other housing options available to low and moderate-income families. Some banks were even hesitant to approve mortgages for the prefab homes, given the 'flight risk' involved where delinquents could theoretically load the units onto a truck bed and skip town. Brossard says that the big lesson from KiwiBuild is that civil servants shouldn't moonlight as real estate developers. 'This is what tends to happen with top-down government programs that push one-size-fits-all solutions,' said Brossard. The study recommends that Carney scrap Build Canada Homes and instead focus on creating a friendlier regulatory environment for private real estate developers. Brossard also said that policymakers can stimulate homebuilders by harmonizing professional qualifications for workers in the building trades across provinces and territories. The office of federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson didn't respond when asked about KiwiBuild by the National Post. National Post Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .
Calgary Herald
26-06-2025
- Business
- Calgary Herald
Failed New Zealand scheme is cautionary tale for Carney's homebuilding agency: report
OTTAWA — Researchers with the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) say Canada's new federal homebuilding agency is likely to overpromise and underdeliver, drawing a cautionary tale from down under. Article content The free-market think tank argues in a new study that New Zealand's now-defunct homebuilding scheme KiwiBuild, a signature policy of Jacinda Ardern's Labour government, shows why government bureaucrats shouldn't try to play real estate developer. Article content Article content Article content 'New Zealand's experience highlights the limits of government intervention in the real estate market, especially in terms of resource allocation,' write co-authors Gabriel Giguère, Yassine Benabid and Renaud Brossard. Article content Article content Brossard told the National Post he was struck by the similarities between KiwiBuild and the Liberal government's Build Canada Homes. Article content 'If you look at government programs that have been done through out the world, this is probably the closest thing to what (Prime Minister) Mark Carney's pitching,' said Brossard. Article content KiwiBuild launched in 2018 with the lofty goal of building 100,000 affordable housing units in a decade. It would never come anywhere near meeting this target, completing just 2,389 units by the end of its last full year of activity in 2024. Article content The program was slammed by both politicians and pundits as a 'complete disaster', contributing to Ardern's fall from global progressive darling to her abrupt resignation in early 2023. Article content Article content By one estimate, KiwiBuild would have taken 436 years to hit the original target of 100,000 homes. Article content Brossard said that one critical mistake that KiwiBuild administrators made was relying too heavily on prefabricated homes. Article content 'In some of the areas where they were hoping to build homes for (KiwiBuild), they found that shipping in a prefab home was actually more expensive than just building one in situ,' said Brossard. Article content Carney has promised billions in subsidies to prefabricated and modular home builders, as part of his plan to double the rate of housing construction and build 500,000 new homes a year within a decade. Article content Brossard and his co-authors report that KiwiBuild's prefab homes were often inferior to other housing options available to low and moderate-income families.
National Post
26-06-2025
- Business
- National Post
Failed New Zealand scheme is cautionary tale for Carney's homebuilding agency: report
OTTAWA — Researchers with the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) say Canada's new federal homebuilding agency is likely to overpromise and underdeliver, drawing a cautionary tale from down under. Article content The free-market think tank argues in a new study that New Zealand's now-defunct homebuilding scheme KiwiBuild, a signature policy of Jacinda Ardern's Labour government, shows why government bureaucrats shouldn't try to play real estate developer. Article content Article content Article content 'New Zealand's experience highlights the limits of government intervention in the real estate market, especially in terms of resource allocation,' write co-authors Gabriel Giguère, Yassine Benabid and Renaud Brossard. Article content Article content Brossard told the National Post he was struck by the similarities between KiwiBuild and the Liberal government's Build Canada Homes. Article content 'If you look at government programs that have been done through out the world, this is probably the closest thing to what (Prime Minister) Mark Carney's pitching,' said Brossard. Article content KiwiBuild launched in 2018 with the lofty goal of building 100,000 affordable housing units in a decade. It would never come anywhere near meeting this target, completing just 2,389 units by the end of its last full year of activity in 2024. Article content The program was slammed by both politicians and pundits as a 'complete disaster', contributing to Ardern's fall from global progressive darling to her abrupt resignation in early 2023. Article content Article content By one estimate, KiwiBuild would have taken 436 years to hit the original target of 100,000 homes. Article content Brossard said that one critical mistake that KiwiBuild administrators made was relying too heavily on prefabricated homes. Article content 'In some of the areas where they were hoping to build homes for (KiwiBuild), they found that shipping in a prefab home was actually more expensive than just building one in situ,' said Brossard. Article content Carney has promised billions in subsidies to prefabricated and modular home builders, as part of his plan to double the rate of housing construction and build 500,000 new homes a year within a decade. Article content Brossard and his co-authors report that KiwiBuild's prefab homes were often inferior to other housing options available to low and moderate-income families.
National Observer
14-06-2025
- Politics
- National Observer
What Gregor Robertson's housing track record can tell us about his ministerial plans
There's a paradox at the heart of today's housing crisis that few politicians are willing to name, let alone solve: Millions of Canadians can't afford a home and desperately want prices to go down. But millions of other Canadians do own a home and desperately want prices not to go down. This is the pickle Canada's new housing minister, Gregor Robertson, failed to address on his inauspicious first day on the job, when a journalist asked him, 'Do you think that prices need to go down?' It was a trick question of course, or at least one loaded with subtext: which massive cohort of Canadians do you plan to screw over, the ones who own a home or the ones who don't? Instead of recognizing the trap, Robertson blithely answered the question he was asked. 'No, I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable – it's a huge part of our economy – but we need to be delivering more affordable housing.' The only part of that answer anyone heard was the first word. ' Canada's new housing minister doesn't think prices need to go down,' CTV trumpeted, as 100 similar headlines ricocheted around the country before the day was over. Full disclosure: I am both a homeowner (albeit one who wishes prices would, in fact, go down), and an acquaintance of Robertson's. I haven't seen or spoken to him in several months, and the housing ministry did not make him or anyone else available to comment for this story. Robertson's opening debacle with the parliamentary press scrum struck me as a rookie move — one that might have been excusable for a rookie politician, but that's not what Robertson is. He's the former three-term mayor of one of Canada's biggest cities, as Conservatives kept reminding him throughout his first week in Question Period. Expanding on the theme of Robertson's supposed love for expensive housing, Conservatives repeatedly accused Robertson of causing Vancouver's housing crisis during his 10-year stint as mayor, during which time home prices almost tripled. Everyone ignored the rest of Robertson's answer, where he talked about delivering more affordable housing, but it's worth revisiting. How exactly does the government intend to do this? How can you introduce cheap housing at one end of the market without affecting prices throughout the rest of it? So far, the only details we have come from the mandate for Build Canada Homes (BCH), the new federal agency Robertson will be in charge of. As the name implies, BCH promises in its mandate to 'get the federal government back in the business of building homes.' Through this agency, the federal government will 'act as a developer to build affordable housing at scale.' Canada doesn't need hundreds or thousands of new homes. It needs millions. That hasn't happened in more than 30 years. And if you ask people in the trenches of getting affordable housing built, it's exactly what the country needs. 'More than just housing' Municipal councils are at the vanguard of housing, from approving changes to land use to issuing building permits, and Robertson entered local politics in 2008, a moment when the federal government had thoroughly washed its hands of the housing portfolio. 'When the minister was first elected mayor of Vancouver, the federal government was openly hostile to the idea of investing in affordable housing,' recalls Thom Anderson, CEO of the Co-Operative Housing Federation of BC. Anderson has been in that role since 2000, and remembers when a newly minted Mayor Robertson struck a task force on affordable housing for Vancouver. One of the notions to come out of that task force was the idea of putting municipal land toward the housing crisis through a body known as Community Land Trust. At Robertson's request, the city put out a call for tenders to build affordable housing on city land. 'Essentially the request said, 'Look, if we made land the city owns available to a Community Land Trust on a 99-year lease for, say, 10 dollars, what could you build?'' Anderson said. 'How quickly could you build it and how affordable would it be, now and in the long haul?' Anderson submitted a tender on behalf of his provincial co-op federation, and won a contract to build 358 homes in an abandoned section of Vancouver's River District. 'That was so successful that the city then gave us seven more sites. And then two more. And now, 10 years later, we've built out 12 sites owned by the city, leased on the long term to the Community Land Trusts, including more than 1,000 deeply affordable co-op homes that will be deeply affordable forever.' In 2021, Monica Jut moved into one of the River District co-op units that Robertson and Anderson helped bring into being. 'It's been one of the most impactful decisions of our lives. It's given us more than just housing; it's given us stability, connection with the other members, and the freedom to grow,'Jut said. She moved here with her teenage daughter from Maple Ridge. 'We lived in market housing, but most of those places were rentals, and when the landlords were selling, it meant that we had to find another place to live.' Jut became a widow 10 years ago. She works for the federal government and has a stable income, but as a single mother, she was unable to afford a home in Vancouver. She pays approximately two-thirds the market rate for her two-bedroom flat, and knows she'll never be subjected to rent hikes or forced to move again. 'The biggest benefit of being part of the Community Land Trust is definitely stability. What they do is they protect our land from speculation and ensure that our homes remain permanently affordable. That security allows us to have bigger dreams.' In addition to making municipal land available, Vancouver – under Robertson's leadership – became the first city in Canada to impose a speculation tax, as well as an empty homes tax, which now generates roughly $150 million each year that is put entirely toward non-market housing. 'It was characterized as a punitive tax grab at the time,' Anderson recalls, 'but if you're going to take some of the wealth generated off the real estate asset base and redistribute it to create more affordable homes, what better use for a tax could there be?' Housing solutions Many of the affordable-housing ideas Robertson came up with have since spread across the country. 'Cities across the country are looking at their own land as a potential way to address the housing crisis, and Gregor could see that early in the process,' said Abi Bond, who spent five years as director of Toronto's housing secretariat after she worked with Robertson as Vancouver's director of homelessness and affordable housing programs. 'He also understood how important it was to embed affordability into supply. When you look at what the City of Vancouver delivered, it's not just supply[ing] market rental. It also includes social housing, supportive housing, all of those types of homes as well. So he didn't forget about people who are experiencing homelessness that needed places to live.' Near the end of Robertson's term, he led a successful push to get provincial funding for temporary modular housing to provide shelter for unhoused city residents. With the help of provincial funding, Vancouver approved 11 modular housing projects in his final year in office, leading to the rapid construction of over 600 units. These numbers, like the amount of co-op housing built (224 units) or approved (648 units) under Robertson's mandate, were drowned out by the wave of price increases and homelessness that overwhelmed any positive impacts Robertson was able to achieve. As a result, Robertson's oft-repeated claim to have built more affordable housing than any other mayor in Canada tends to ring hollow – especially in light of his ill-advised promise, early in his career, to end homelessness in Vancouver. Bond agrees that the solutions Robertson came up with were insufficient to save Vancouver from the twin explosion of housing costs and homelessness. But she doesn't feel that was the mayor's fault. 'It's very challenging to control the market at a municipal level, especially when many of the things affecting that market, affecting the housing crisis, are not in your control.' Anderson agrees and blames 'the complete absence of federal and provincial partners' for the problems that overwhelmed Robertson's best efforts to do what he could with the limited funds a mayor has to work with. Even so, 'as a result of [Robertson's work as mayor], there is now a fledgling network of community land trusts literally all over the country – in Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia – reclaiming neighbourhoods for whole communities who are dispossessed,' Anderson said. 'You don't do that without a political champion, and our political champion was Gregor Robertson.' Millions of homes needed Four thousand kilometers east of Vancouver, Tom Clement saw what Robertson and Anderson were accomplishing. As CEO of the Co-Operative Housing Federation of Toronto, the largest co-op federation in Canada, Clement decided to follow suit. 'We're very impressed with what's happened in Vancouver, the great work they did when Gregor Robertson was the mayor,' he said. Clement's federation is currently collaborating with a community land trust to build a 612-unit co-op in Scarborough, the biggest of its kind to be built since the federal government stopped building co-op housing under former rime minister Jean Chretien. Like all co-ops, the Scarborough complex will provide rent at below-market rates (typically 65 per cent of market rates, though that figure varies across projects and regions). The complex is being built through a mix of municipal land grants and federal financing. 'That's what I call the BC model,' Clement said. When asked how he felt about Robertson ascending to federal cabinet, Clement was thrilled. 'To have such an experienced federal housing minister, it's fantastic. You've got to understand the municipalities. Housing is very much a municipal-level issue, but there's no way that the municipalities can do it alone. They need a federal program, a strong federal partnership, and I think that's what he's going to bring.' But scale remains the issue. Canada doesn't need hundreds or thousands of new homes. It needs millions. 'One of the biggest inhibiting factors of scale is how fast and how much financing and grants you can actually access,' said Bond. 'For most municipalities, that's what's controlling their ability to move quickly. Everybody has the ambition, they've got sites, they've got access to density through local zoning. But the federal government has been limited by the scope of their programs.' That appears poised to change now with Robertson at the helm of an agency – Build Canada Homes – that expressly promises 'to provide $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to affordable home builders.' That's on top of tens of billions more in other financing and grants, plus the federal lands that Robertson is now in a position to add to municipal community land trusts. 'He's got the prime minister's mandate to embrace a new program of supply-like construction that hasn't been seen since just after the Second World War,' says Anderson, head of the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC. At the same time, Anderson cautioned Robertson 'is going to be inheriting a machinery, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the federal bureaucracy, that hasn't been challenged to do that for quite some time. There's a lot of muscle memory that's been lost there.' On top of reinvigorating federal bureaucracies, Robertson now confronts the task of aligning 13 provincial and territorial governments with thousands of towns and cities. The odds are steep, and the timelines are almost guaranteed to disappoint anyone hoping for a sudden change in Canada's housing crisis. But after 25 years in the business of affordable housing, Anderson is more optimistic today than he's ever been. 'We haven't had a housing minister in a long, long time, if ever, that is so ready to tackle this challenge.'
