Rents have been increasing rapidly in many parts of the country, primarily caused by a lack of accessible, climate-friendly, affordable, and market-rate purpose-built rental units to house a growing population.

Increasing rents inflict the most significant harm on the lowest-income Canadians, including seniors, people on fixed incomes, single-parent led households, students, newcomers to Canada, and Indigenous peoples.

Rising rents are also contributing to a wave of new homelessness - the number of people losing their housing from unaffordability nationally is on the same scale as people losing their housing from Canada’s largest natural disasters. Further, our housing crisis threatens economic growth, pricing workers out of the communities where their skills are needed most.

We must urgently build a healthy rental housing system to ensure affordability for all, meet the federal government’s commitment to the progressive realization of the Right to Housing, support economic growth, and end homelessness. We require practical solutions to dramatically increase the supply of rental housing. We need rental housing of all kinds: market-rate, affordable, co-operative, non-profit, supportive, and otherwise, to house our growing population today and in the years to come.

The PLACE Centre, in collaboration with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH), and REALPAC, recently brought together a group of housing experts from the private and non-profit sectors, including investors, developers, owners, and policy experts, for a Roundtable to brainstorm solutions to address this crisis and restore rental housing affordability. The outcome of the Roundtable is The National Housing Accord: A Multi-Sector Approach to Ending Canada’s Rental Housing Crisis.

The National Housing Accord

 

Summarized in this Accord are Ten Recommendations - a series of rapidly actionable recommendations for the 2023 Fall Economic Statement and Budget 2024. These recommendations include providing low-cost, long-term fixed-rate financing for constructing purpose-built rental housing, as well as financing to upgrade existing purpose-built rentals to make them more accessible, climate-friendly, and energy efficient, as well as changing the building code to allow for more accessible, climate-friendly, and affordable purpose-built rental projects.

The Ten Recommendations recognize that no one actor in the system can achieve Canada’s housing targets single-handed. The federal government must lead the way through a coordinated effort with key stakeholders – including not-for-profits and the private sector – while accounting for resources, the financial viability of building supply, the productivity and innovation to reach targets, and the will to create conducive regulatory environments, all while closing the gap for affordable housing.

This is a significant task, for which our Ten Recommendations are a starting point.

Together, these recommendations will help millions of people have a safe, secure, and affordable place to live, create jobs and raise incomes, meet the needs of our growing population, and play a major role in ending homelessness.

The housing sector is ready to step up and address this crisis, but we need the federal government to join us and step into their vital housing leadership role.

Read ‘The National Housing Accord’

 

our work

Four Pathways to Housing Affordability
November 19, 2024

The Blueprint for More and Better Housing, released in early 2024, provided a plan for Canada to build 5.8 million affordable, resilient and low-carbon homes. Although many of the recommendations have proven popular with policymakers and the public, getting buy-in for the overall vision can be difficult. Too often, those policymakers and the public see […]

Read More
Ontario Communities Falling Behind on Homebuilding
November 18, 2024

Over the past six years, from Canada Day 2018 to Canada Day 2024, Canada’s population has grown by over 4.2 million people, requiring a substantial increase in Canada’s housing supply. This rapid naturally leads to the question, Which communities are getting it done when it comes to homebuilding? In this memo, Ontario Communities Falling Behind […]

Read More
Less is More: Where we Build 5.8 Million Homes Matters
November 13, 2023

There is a broad consensus that Canada is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has estimated that 5.8 million homes, nationally, need to be built by 2030 in order to address the housing affordability crisis. In Ontario, the provincial target is 1.5 million homes. As part of […]

Read More
Getting International Students To Stay and Work in Canada is at Odds with Our Policies
October 4, 2023

International students are an invaluable part of the prospective Canadian workforce that can help address the critical skilled labour shortages facing many Canadian industries, including construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. However, Canada’s current policies are at odds with the objective of having international students stay and work in Canada. If this is unaddressed, Canada will fail […]

Read More
Addressing Forestry’s Skilled Labour Shortage: Insights from Women Working in Forestry
September 19, 2023

Canada’s forestry sector is facing a labour shortage due to a wave of baby boomer retirements and little interest from younger generations to pursue a career in forestry. Despite the need for more workers, women still comprise only 17% of the sector in Canada. One study also found that women in forestry are rarely in […]

Read More
Working Together to Build 1.5 Million Homes
August 17, 2023

To keep up with an aging and growing population, it is projected that Ontario will need to build 1.5 million homes in the next ten years. Yet, Ontario has never built more than 850,000 homes in a ten-year period. Who is responsible for making this 1.5 million homes goal a reality, while making it happen […]

Read More