Submission to HUMA parliamentary committee on historic federal investments in housing
Steve Pomeroy
Executive Advisor and Industry professor at Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC) McMaster University
Last week I was invited as a witness at the Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) committee of parliament to provide evidence on federal investments in housing.
?The committee had framed the study to examine of the level of investment as well as number of non-profit and co-operative units produced between 2006- 2015. Drawing on data generated through a recent research study at CHEC, I was able to provide the answers to the committees questions on level of investment and outputs, but this was far from a easy exercise. Data are extremely elusive and available only via requests for customized tabulations ?– they are not publicly reported and available. The main point made to the committee was that in monitoring the impact of the National Housing Strategy (NHS) and Canada Housing Plan (CHP) we do not repeat the mistake of the last two decades - an absence of transparent objective reporting. I provided three recommendations to strengthen monitoring and reporting on the NHS and CHP.
I also reported that federal investments in 1990-1994 (when funding for new social housing was terminated), produced non-profit and co-op housing that together accounted for 10% of all housing completed in that period. Had this level of investment and share of starts continued for the next three decades (1995 thru 2023) we could have added an additional 335,000 homes to Canada’s stock of affordable non-market housing. The full detailed brief is available here
Mental Health Advocate & Consultant | Leading Mental Health Initiatives
3 个月Steve, Appreciate you sharing this!
President, Private Equity @ Plocamium Holdings
7 个月https://plocamium.com/huma-therapeutics-raises-80-million-could-eye-middle-east-expansion/
Secretary-General - Cooperative Housing International / Julie of all trades in communications, program development and delivery.
8 个月This is so disappointing. What do all those analysts do at CMHC? The blatant lack of accountability and transparency in CMHC and the feds is mind-blowing. Thanks for doing all this research.
Founder & Principal at Trillium Housing
8 个月Almost of these units would have received federal funding of some sort as the economics make it practically impossible to deliver low-cost housing without some form of subsidy. It is inexcusable that CMHC has not published the data or worse did not maintain it.
Chief Executive Officer at The Agency for Co-operative Housing
9 个月The Agency is trying to do its part in data collection on FCHI, we're just missing Quebec...