Non-profit housing could hold key to current crisis, so why aren’t politicians talking about it?

Single-family homes have been a mainstay of affordability promises during the federal election campaign, but some say Canada’s homelessness crisis will only get worse if the next federal government doesn’t do more to protect renters and fund supportive housing.

“We really need to be focusing on how to protect the people that are most vulnerable right now,” said Sara Beyer, policy manager for the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights. “And the people that are really the most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis are renters.”

Recent data from Abacus Research shows that more than 50 per cent of Canadians are worried about being able to afford their mortgage or rent payments due to economic upheaval and uncertainty.

Sixty-seven per cent of Canadians also report seeing homelessness in their communities, with greater visibility in urban areas and provinces like Ontario and British Columbia.

“Housing and homelessness are so closely related … and we know that supportive housing and housing first approaches are such tried and tested solutions,” Beyer said.

“So it would be great to see a lot more focus on that as the election campaign kind of starts to wrap up.”

Both Conservative and Liberal policy platforms have largely focused on first-time home buyers. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to eliminate the goods and services tax (GST) on all newly built homes up to $1.3 million. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to remove the GST on newly built and substantially renovated homes for novice buyers. If elected, a liberal government would facilitate the construction of 500,000 new homes each year, he said.

Poilievre has also committed to selling 15 per cent of government buildings to expedite the construction of affordable housing. However, to date, the Conservative Party hasn’t made any policy announcements specifically addressing homelessness, evictions or rent supports.

The New Democratic Party has also promised assistance to first-time buyers but has focused its platform on a proposal for national rent control and a pledge to prevent real estate investment trusts, hedge funds, and private equity funds from purchasing affordable housing.

Leader Jagmeet Singh has also put forward a $16 billion national housing strategy to increase Canada’s supply of non-market housing.

Opposing views on rent control

The promise of national rent control doesn’t sit well with Moshe Lander, an economist and senior lecturer at Concordia University.

“Rent control needs to be avoided under all circumstances; it has very perverse effects on the market. It will not solve any problem, in fact, it’ll create a whole bunch of problems that didn’t even exist before,” he said.

Rental caps disincentivize the construction of new rental units, he said, and make it more difficult for landlords to renovate existing housing stock. 

Lower rental prices will also drive up demand, further exacerbating the housing shortage, Lander said, adding tight controls can lead to under-the-table bidding, pushing the rental prices up in some instances.

Beyer disagrees.

“There’s a really prevalent myth that rent control prevents rental housing construction and gets in the way of rental housing being well-maintained,” she said. “But we actually know that’s not the case, and there have been several studies both domestically and internationally that show that.”

“And renters are in such increasingly precarious positions—they often earn less money than homeowners and often pay more of their income towards housing than homeowners,” she said.

“And so, when we don’t have a good amount of affordable housing available, it’s even more important to ensure that renters are protected in their homes.”

The cost of not protecting renters is further increases in homelessness and growing encampments, she said.

However, Lander and Beyer do agree that rental housing needs to be destigmatized. 

“Why have we created this narrative that being a renter is somehow like being a second-class citizen in this country? There’s nothing wrong with renting,” Moshe said.

Beyer goes further with her assessment, suggesting Canadians would benefit from embracing non-traditional housing solutions.

“I think it’s really important that we de-stigmatize and normalize different types of rental housing,” she said, referring to co-operative housing, non-profit housing and public housing.

Greater investment in social housing is something she would like to see on the table in the final days of the election campaign, but so far, it’s received little, if any, attention from election front runners.

Donna-Lynne Rosa, CEO of Atira Women’s Resource Society in Vancouver, which provides supportive housing to women and children affected by violence, said all parties need to address supportive housing if they want to prevent further increases in homelessness.

“We need to understand that housing is a journey for some folks, it’s not a linear thing,” she said. “And to really understand what’s needed, you need to talk to the folks on the frontline.”

She’d like to see innovative home builders, Indigenous builders, and non-profits working with marginalized communities receive greater attention and, more importantly, funding.

“My concern is that they’re not supporting the service providers,” Rosa said. 

“They need to make sure that they’re explicitly funding supportive housing with services like mental health support, harm reduction, gender-based violence support that’s needed, especially for the marginalized groups like indigenous and immigrant communities.”