Hamilton has been shut out, so far, in the announcements made by Prime Minister Carney as he launched Build Canada Homes this week. The federal agency that will lead federal affordable housing efforts will start by building 4,000 housing units on six federally-owned sites, none in Hamilton. And Carney announced that the Canada Lands Company portfolio will come under Build Canada Homes, which will give Build Canada Homes access to the federal government’s land portfolio. Carney mentioned that the portfolio includes 88 properties already identified as suitable for housing. None of those 88 are in Hamilton.
These are just the first announcements, so we need not despair, yet. We can take heart from the commitment, on the Build Canada Homes website, that “We will focus primarily on non-market housing.” That’s the right approach—only not-for-profit housing providers can deliver really affordable house. Carney talks a lot about scaling up housing production. The best estimate of the right scale of affordable construction that we need comes from Dr. Carolyn Whitzman. She has done the most detailed calculations of need, based on household sizes and incomes. In a new report, she estimates that Canada needs 4.4 million affordable housing units in a decade, 3 million of them affordable to the bottom 20 per cent of income earners. Those would have to be non-profit or co-operative units to be affordable at those levels. The annual investment needed for new construction (or for buying buildings with affordable units to keep them permanently non-profit and affordable) would be $40 billion. If the federal government retained ownership of the units, the construction cost would be spread over the lifetime of the asset rather than recorded as government spending when the units are built. As Whitzman puts it, “Depreciation would then be offset by rental income.” You can read the report here: https://maytree.com/publications/scaling-up-affordable-housing-through-a-build-canada-homes-proposal/ Earlier, Whitzman estimated that Hamilton needed more than 20,000 homes that rented for less than $1,075 (2021 dollars). The Hamilton is Home coalition is ready to build almost 1,000 units right now, almost as soon as funding can be provided.