Ottawa has unveiled a national housing strategy that will create 100,000 new housing units and repair another 300,000 over the coming decade, federal officials say.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited a Toronto neighbourhood Wednesday to unveil details of the plan to invest $11.2 billion to address the urgent housing needs of 530,000 vulnerable families and individuals.
The plan will cut chronic homelessness by 50 percent, federal officials say.
Trudeau said the strategy marks a significant return to the housing file for the federal government. Combined with investments from other levels of government, total spending could reach $40 billion.
From Tim Harper, The
Toronto Star.
First, let’s not pretend there isn’t a healthy helping of politics in the Liberal government’s new national housing strategy.
It does address an urgent need – but apparently not urgent enough to get most of the money flowing before the next federal election. Deferring major spending until after the next ballots are cast is a grab from the playbook of the former Conservative government.
It requires buy-in and funding from the provinces, so there is still work to do before the Liberals can truly announce this with their attendant celestial horns.
Opinion.
I’ve been renting in Toronto for almost a decade now, and I’ve watched rents in my neighbourhood(s) climb substantially. In that period I have moved eight times, and whenever I look for housing the uncertainty of living in an apartment that isn’t rent controlled weighs heavily on my mind.
That’s why I got excited when the government of Ontario announced it was extending rent control to every dwelling in the province, as opposed to just buildings constructed before 1991.
This move prompted a lot of commentary, and the chorus was overwhelmingly negative.
Critics argued that, under rent control, the quantity and quality of rental units will fall as developers lose the incentive to build rentals, and that the province should instead tackle the root of the problem: the supply of new housing is not keeping up with demand.
Much to my disappointment, few if any critics addressed what I felt was the real issue: the lack of security of tenure. So I looked into it.
Images. Zach.
Notes.
This is a complex issue, and an ongoing story as we
head up to the Ontario provincial election in June 2018. With the federal
government good for a couple of more years, look for some strategic support to
their Liberal colleagues at the provincial level. In all fairness, with two
levels of government involved in the funding and implementation, there is going
to be some kind of integration between the two. This requires communication and
coordination no matter who is doing it. It is also interesting to speculate
whether provincial Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown
or the Conservative John
Tory, the Mayor of Toronto would turn down a federal plan that would
benefit their constituents once they understood that this was going forwards.
There’s been plenty of comment on this issue, and an
announcement of a provincial Portable
Housing Benefit.
— Zach
Neal.
Additional
Coverage.
Thank you for reading.
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