A Home You
Actually Own
There was a time when a working Canadian could buy a home on a single income, raise a family in it and pass it on. That time is gone, not because we lack the land, labour, or lumber to build, but because government after government handed our housing market to corporations and investors who treat the roofs over our heads as a means to gouge us. Today, more than 8,000 homes in Abbotsford and Mission alone are owned by investors. Working families are being priced out of the communities we built, competing against corporations just to find a backyard for our kids to play in. But it doesn't have to be this way.
In 1944, facing a housing crisis every bit as severe as today's, the federal government didn't wait for the market to act. CMHC financed nearly forty per cent of all homes built in Canada during that period ushering in a golden age of housing in Canada. Then in the 1980s, the federal government began to retreat, freezing CMHC's budget in 1993. Every decade since, the average cost of a home doubled. Today, we need 4.8 million new homes to restore affordability. We built our way out of a housing crisis before. We will do it again, and this time, the homes will belong to those who live in them, so no one can take them away from us.
Build Single-Family Homes Directly
In 1944, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers preparing to return home and war workers flooding into cities, the Curtis Report found that there was a looming housing crisis. The country needed to build 725,000 new homes, just three years earlier, the census counted roughly 2.6 million homes, meaning a 28 per cent increase in the nation’s housing stock. The federal government didn't wait for the market to solve the housing crisis. It built homes directly, and kept building them for decades, helping produce nearly forty years of broad housing affordability and playing a central role in the emergence of Canada's middle class. When the CMHC was established in 1946, it absorbed Wartime Housing Limited and went on to finance the construction of 660,000 homes by 1961, roughly 38 per cent of all homes built during that period, and of them, more than 10 per cent were built directly by the federal government. Mission—Matsqui's New Democrats are calling for the creation of a new public home construction agency to build single-family homes based on those same modest, standardized designs, keeping construction costs low by avoiding the bloated profit margins of private developers, and ensuring these homes are genuinely attainable for working families rather than priced for investors.
Build a Million Public, Co-op, and Non-Profit Homes
From 1973 to 1993, the federal government built 661,000 units of social housing, and an additional 60,000 units of co-operative housing, providing for those with core housing needs. While social housing is owned directly by the federal government and offered at subsidized rates, co-op housing is owned directly by those that live there, and run democratically. However in 1993, CMHC’s budget was frozen, and social and co-op housing construction ceased. From 1993 until 2016, the federal government built just 1,500 units of social housing. While providing for those with core housing needs is essential, Mission–Matsqui’s New Democrats believe every Canadian deserves the opportunity to own their home, and that’s why we’re fighting for a public builder to deliver one million public housing units within five years, by using federal lands where appropriate and adopting modular and pre-fab designs already developed by CMHC. While these will include, non-profit as well as supportive units, we will advocate for co-op unbits to remain the focus. According to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, those living in co-operative housing pay $400 to $500 less per month than those in conventionally owned apartments, because when working people own their homes collectively and democratically, no corporation can jack up the rent or buy them out.
Sell Homes Through Credit Unions, Not Bay Street
Canada's six largest banks control more than 90 per cent of all financial assets, and those same banks profit directly from the housing crisis through their investments in real estate. Mission—Matsqui's New Democrats are calling for all homes built by this new construction agency to be sold exclusively through credit unions rather than the big banks. Credit unions provide more affordable mortgage rates, return profits to their members, and give working people a democratic say over the institution setting their mortgage rate. By directing these homes through member-owned financial institutions rather than Bay Street, we reduce the overall cost to the buyer at every stage, from construction to financing, and ensure the wealth generated by this program stays in the hands of working people rather than corporate shareholders. To ensure credit unions have the financing they need to purchase these new developments, Mission—Matsqui's New Democrats are calling for the creation of a Standing Term Financial Cooperative Liquidity Facility under the CMHC.
CMHC-Backed Co-operative Housing Bonds
Mission—Matsqui's New Democrats are pushing for CMHC-backed community bonds, publicly guaranteed bonds that finance the construction of private co-operative housing developments, giving communities the tools to build the housing they need without depending entirely on federal construction capacity. When the federal government backs the bonds, working people can build and own their homes. That’s how we ensure every working Canadian can actually own their homes, collectively, and democratically.
Rein In The Real Estate Investment Trusts and Cap The Rents
When the federal government deregulated real estate investment trusts in the 1990s, it handed our rental housing market to corporations whose only obligation is to their shareholders. REITs have spent the decades since buying up affordable rental housing, evicting tenants, and resetting rents as high as the market will bear. New Democrats are fighting to end their tax breaks, ban REITs from buying affordable housing, and stop CMHC-insured loans from going to REITs unless they are funding non-market housing. Alongside this, New Democrats are calling for a national rent cap, preventing rent increases above the rate of inflation including for vacant units, so landlords cannot evict tenants just to reset the price. We’re calling for federal housing funding to be made conditional on provinces adopting standards to protect tenants from renovictions and bad-faith evictions.
Establish a Community Acquisition Fund
New Democrats are fighting to establish a community-managed federal acquisition fund to preserve at-risk rental properties, ensuring that when rental buildings go up for sale, public bodies, non-profits, co-operatives, and land trusts get first refusal before corporate buyers can snap them up. Federal housing dollars will be tied to affordability retention clauses, so that public investment in housing stays affordable permanently rather than being flipped for profit the moment the subsidy period expires. This is how we protect the affordable housing stock we already have while we build the housing stock we need.
Implement a For Indigenous, By Indigenous Housing Policy
The housing crisis affecting First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities is a national emergency, nearly one in six Indigenous people live in homes needing major repairs, and one in six live in housing considered unsuitable for the number of people living there. New Democrats are fighting to allocate at least 20 per cent of all federal housing investments to Indigenous communities, work with Indigenous leadership to develop and fund a national For Indigenous, By Indigenous housing strategy, and fund First Nations and housing authorities to develop the culturally relevant housing their communities need. There can be no reconciliation without housing justice for Indigenous communities.
End Homelessness
It is unconscionable that more and more people are cast into homelessness in a country as wealthy as Canada. Homelessness is not an inevitability, it is a policy choice, made again and again by Liberal and Conservative governments that have chosen to clear encampments rather than build the deeply affordable housing that would actually solve the problem. Across Canada, nearly half of all homeless youth were in the provincial foster care system, which is why nearly a third of all homeless people reported having been through the system, and why Indigenous people, who are disproportionately put through the foster care system, are seven times more likely to experience homelessness. When young folks are forced out of the system, with no support, they end up on our streets, meaning that stabilizing young people today prevents chronic homelessness tomorrow. New Democrats are fighting for a comprehensive strategy to end homelessness: co-designing federal housing programs with non-profit developers, co-ops, land trusts, and people with lived experience of homelessness; making supportive housing with wraparound services a priority of the National Housing Strategy; investing in Housing First for Youth programs nationwide; and implementing an income-tested housing benefit delivered through the tax system to ensure everyone has access to housing first.