By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
A federal loan program intended to promote the construction of affordable, wheelchair-accessible rental housing units has led to the construction of 48,000 units across the country, according to the federal government. However, despite the fact that Quebec has nearly a quarter of Canada’s population and the highest proportion of renters of any province – nearly 60 per cent of Quebecers rent, according to a recent Angus Reid poll – less than 5,400 of those units are in the province.
The $55-billion Rental Construction Financing Initiative has existed in various forms since 2017 and received a $15-billion funding top-up in this year’s federal budget. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which administers the program, it provides low-cost funding to eligible borrowers during the riskiest phase of product development of rental apartments.
The program, aimed at “general-interest” housing – housing other than seniors’ and students’ residences – offers low-interest loans ranging from a minimum of $1,000,000 up to 100 per cent of the cost of the residential component. Eligible projects must contain at least five rental housing units, respond to a need for rental supply, and contain at least 20 per cent affordable units (defined as rent below 30 per cent of the median total family income for the region where the unit will be built) for at least ten years. (Projects which have received additional funding from municipal or provincial affordable housing initiatives may be exempt from the federal affordability requirement.) They must also feature 10 per cent wheelchair accessible units and meet certain energy efficiency requirements. Developers must “prove financial and operational availability” to be considered.
Compton-Stanstead MP Marie-Claude Bibeau is among the Liberal MPs promoting this initiative – a key plank of the government’s housing strategy – across the country. “Making loans more accessible to encourage construction of housing while making sure some apartments are reserved to be affordable is important for us,” she told the BCN. “We want private entrepreneurs to know this money is available under very interesting conditions.”
When the top-up to the program was first announced earlier this year, NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan told reporters it would make only a small dent in the affordable housing crisis, stating that “97 per cent of the units built are not affordable.” Bibeau responded that definitions of “affordable housing” vary according to region and other circumstances. “Maybe they [the NDP] were using different affordability criteria,” she said.
Bibeau said she expected buildings financed by the program to be built “pretty quickly.”
“We’re talking about loans from an experienced organization [the CMHC] so that wouldn’t create unreasonable delays.”
Bibeau said she hoped 131,000 new rental units would be built across the country by 2031 as a result of the recent $15-billion top-up.