The November 5 Ontario budget “did not make any new commitments for housing specifically,” the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada noted. Before the budget, the federation had urged major investments in affordable housing and repairs to existing community housing as central to responding to the housing crisis and Ontario’s economic recovery. No such investments were announced.
New spending was announced in the budget for:
- a new Seniors’ Home Safety Tax Credit for 2021 to help seniors stay in their homes longer, reimbursing 25 per cent of eligible renovations up to $10,000, regardless of income. It can be used for such things as installing wheelchair ramps, non-slip flooring, additional light fixtures, renovations to permit first-floor occupancy or a secondary suite for a senior. Comment: While potentially useful, this measure will add new housing units only if secondary suites are created and they could easily cost much more than $10,000 each. The budget contained no new money for home care, a vital part of allowing seniors to stay in their existing homes.
- $212 million added to the Social Services Relief Fund and originally announced in August, to help municipalities and Indigenous partners to protect homeless shelter staff and residents, expand rent support programming and create long-term housing solutions. A press release said some of the money is being used in York, Durham and Waterloo to construct modular housing supportive and transitional housing units and in other regions to acquire motels. Comment: Some of this money could be used to create some new units or repair existing ones. That depends on local decisions on how to use this money.
- $540 million for COVID safety measures in long-term care homes. The budget called for increasing daily direct care per long-term care resident to four hours, over a four-year period. The government has previously committed to invest $1.75 billion to build 30,000 new long-term care beds (there are about 77,000 beds now). Comment: It’s not clear how much money has been allocated for increasing patient care hours, which is needed for all patients, not just those with COVID. The promised expansion to create new beds is needed—the waitlist for a long-term care bed in Ontario was almost 35,000 people in early 2019.
You can read the budget at https://budget.ontario.ca/2020/contents.html
The Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Ontario Region, and the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association have been urging, since 2018, that the provincial government:
- fund construction of 69,000 new units of affordable housing, with Ontario’s share of the cost estimated at $690 million;
- fund 30,000 units of supportive housing, at $50 million a year;
- fund renovations to the province’s 260,000 community housing units at $104 million a year;
- and provide rent supplements for 311,000 tenants at $280 million a year. https://onpha.on.ca/Content/Advocacy_and_research/Advocacy/Affordable_Housing_Plan_for_Ontario.aspx
In its detailed response to the Ontario budget, the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association expressed its disappointment that “housing was not a focus and few new initiatives for community housing were announced.” The ONPHA report notes that the Social Services Relief Fund money mentioned above is not sufficient to cover the community housing sectors emergency costs and some housing providers have not received any funding. And the organization will continue to advocate for what wasn’t in the budget—financial help for unemployed and low-income tenants for rent relief or rent arrears; stabilization funding for community housing providers during the pandemic; protection for existing community housing; the investments outlined above; and incentives to develop purpose-built rental housing and affordable homes for ownership. A summary of the ONPHA report can be found at http://qc.onpha.on.ca/2020/11/onphas-analysis-of-the-2020-ontario-budget-top-five-takeaways-for-community-housing/ and there are links there to the full report.