03) FEDERAL CUTS COST 22,000 AFFORDABLE HOMES EVERY YEAR
PV Vancouver Bureau, with files from an article by Michael Shapcott at www.wellesleyinstitute.com
Canada's housing crisis is getting worse, thanks largely to a steep decline in federal funding.
A recent report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), based on actual results from 2008-2010, and estimates for 2011 to 2016, confirms that the two‑decade erosion of federal affordable housing investments is continuing.
Spending on these investments, including the affordable housing initiative, reached $3.6 billion in 2010, part of the 2009 stimulus budget. However, funding was cut by more than one‑third in 2011, and those cuts will continue through 2016.
The CMHC confirms that the number of households assisted under federal housing programs will be cut by almost 100,000, dropping from 623,700 in 2008 to 525,000 in 2016. That cut of 16% in federally‑subsidized households comes at a time when the after-shocks from the 2008 recession continue to cause deep housing and homelessness distress.
For instance, the affordable housing wait list for the City of Toronto hit an all‑time record of 83,681 households in March of 2012. Toronto's wait list has set a new record every month since the fall of 2008.
By 2016, the federal affordable housing initiative will end, and combined federal housing investments will have been cut to $1.8 billion ‑ a cut of 52% in just six years.
At the same time, the CMHC's net income will rise to $1.6 billion annually by 2016, thanks to revenues from commercial activities such as premiums from the sale of mortgage insurance. Many of the federal housing dollars leverage a dollar or more from provincial and municipal governments, and a dollar or more from affordable housing providers ‑ which adds up to an annual loss of $5.6 billion in affordable housing investments in 2016 and every subsequent year. That cumulative total in lost funding could fully finance more than 22,000 affordable homes annually across Canada.
This trend began in the late 1980s, a factor in the steep rise in homelessness and "precariously‑housed" Canadian families. The Wellesley Institute's Precarious Housing in Canada flipsheet finds that 1.5 million households are in core housing need, and 3.1 million households (about one-quarter of the Canadian total) pay 30% or more of their income on housing.
The health impact of precarious housing is called "Canada's hidden emergency" by the Centre for Research in Inner City Health at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, which sets out the data and analysis from Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.
The Wellesley Institute charts the erosion of federal housing investments since the late 1980s, including a few upward blips in 2001, 2006 and 2009. Each of these temporary infusions of funding ended, returning to the downward trend.
In 1993, the federal government stopped permanent funding for new affordable housing. Three years later, plans were announced to transfer the administration of housing programs to provincial jurisdiction, and in 1998, Ontario announced a further download of housing to municipalities. By the mid‑1990s, Canada's national housing program launched in 1973 ‑ which generated more than half of the affordable homes across the country ‑ had been completely dismantled.
In 2009, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing delivered a scathing final report on his fact-finding mission to Canada. The Special Rapporteur concluded that while Canada has a long history of housing successes, the cuts starting in the late 1980s have effectively prevented Canada from meeting its international housing obligations.
Bill C‑400, a private member's bill to create a plan to meet Canada's housing obligations, was introduced in the Commons in February 2012. A similar bill in the last Parliament drew the support of the majority of MPs, including members of the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois. The Conservatives opposed the bill; although it passed second reading and amendment at committee, it died on the order paper when Parliament was dissolved for the May 2011 federal election.
More housing news, research and analysis is available at the Wellesley Institute website, www.wellesleyinstitute.com.
(The above article is from the June 16-30, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)