Vancouver’s mayor relieved as Ottawa rolls out national housing strategy

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TORONTO, ON. (NEWS 1130) – The federal government has unveiled its long awaited national housing strategy, with $40 billion worth of commitments to create or improve affordable housing, and help struggling Canadians find a home.

“Even one Canadian sleeping in the street is one too many,” explains Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has he stood in front of a housing project in Toronto. It was the site chosen as his government released details of their plan to build 100,000 new affordable housing units across the country over the next 10 years. He’s also promising to pump billions of dollars into repairing or renovating existing ones.

The government is also planning to create a new benefit to help low-income tenants pay the rent. “Over time, we expect this benefit to support more than 300,000 households across the country.”


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Trudeau went on to say his government will also declare housing a fundamental right for all Canadians in hopes of cutting the rate of homelessness in half. Our government is committed to cutting the rate of chronic homelessness in Canada by a full 50 per cent. Housing rights are human rights.”

While $40 billion is a lot of cash, much of it won’t start flowing until after the 2019 election and the feds are relying on the provinces and private sector to pick up some of the tab. Reaction has largely been positive, but some groups are worried the funding won’t come for a couple of years, pointing out people need homes now.

Vancouver’s mayor reacts

Vancouver’s mayor is relieved and grateful for the plan he’s been begging for since he first took office in 2008.

Gregor Robertson has been promising to end homelessness in Vancouver for nearly a decade and now he feels he finally has the support he needs from other levels of government, but he admits he doesn’t know exactly how much money is headed this way.

“I would expect we’ll at least get our per capita share of the overall federal funding as we would with provincial funding as well. We’ve set a target of 72,000 affordable homes over the next 10 years, so the planning and the strategy at the city level will complement the work the federal government’s doing. We’ll expect to get our fair share of that funding.”

Earlier, Robertson told dozens of people gathered for the official announcement at a social housing building on the city’s Downtown Eastside that it’s “embarrassing” Canada hasn’t had a national housing strategy until now.

“In the past, it’s been very restricted to only working with the province. We’ll get our share of the funding and we’ll have the province at the table with us and expect that they will be contributing their fair share too.”

Robertson says finding space for the new units shouldn’t be a problem. “We have city land available. We’ve made that clear and now that their strategy is on the table, we want to see the resources that we can build out these sites and maximize the affordable housing that’s on them.”

When he took office, Robertson had vowed to get rid of homelessness by 2015.

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