From Dollars to Doors: The federal budget’s answer to Canada’s housing crisis

Full Panel
Transcript

Note to readers: This video session was transcribed using auto-transcribing software.  Questions or concerns with the transcription can be directed to events@canurb.org with “transcription” in the subject line.

Mary W Rowe Hi, everybody. It’s Mary Rowe from the Canadian Urban Institute, really pleased to be having you join us today, this morning on the West coast, midday here in central Canada  and not quite afternoon tea yet in the East coast, but an hour, an hour and a half ahead of us. What a tremendous moment this is for a bunch of folks that have been watching carefully to see when would we reach the point where housing would seize the moment and where we would see the level of all hands on deck that we think we’re seeing. And I think it’s going to be interesting for those of us who are city watchers, working across multiple domains. I’m always thinking, how could this have happened more quickly? Because it’s been a crisis for some time. And what’s the next crisis and how do we mobilize quicker? It’s the old story, right? What do we learn about how to mobilize folks? So, I happened to be in Toronto today, the Canadian Urban Institute is a national entity working in communities across the country. Many, many people coming in from other places, including, Lisa Helps, who’s just signed on. Lisa, you can turn your camera off because I’m doing the blurb. You get to have a chance to just take a breath. And, we have, as you can see, we have people coming in, multiple time zones. Lisa’s just leapt off a stage to make herself available for CityTalk. This is the traditional territory of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people across the country. We always try to acknowledge in some way the debt and the obligation that we continue to live with. And could there be a more prescient topic about the Indigenous history of our places when it comes to housing? So we always encourage people to come into the chat, sign in from whatever traditional territory you happen to be here, coming in from today, and for us to be cognizant of the implications and in the budget, there’s quite a lot about Indigenous housing an Indigenous communities. We can probably talk a bit about that in the session today. Just be always remindful that we have a very active, engaged chat function on City Talk. And if you’re one of those people who’s never actually bothered to open the chat, here’s your chance. Open the chat. Put yourself in there. You will see a whole parallel universe emerges there – of people putting up questions, many of which I can put into the conversation. But there will be others that they answer themselves. You guys have a whole world there. We publish the chat, we publish the video. And, this kind of hour is our hour to really parse what we see in front of us and the  phrasing we always use is “what’s working, what’s not and what’s next”. And so we were appreciative that these folks have been willing to come on, to talk with us about what they saw in the budget that relates to housing, but also the task force on climate already produced, there’s a whole bunch of different reports that have been produced to make this issue as pressing as it is. It took a lot of actions to get the Government of Canada to make this as big a focus as they have. And many, many, many of you were there on this session, but many, many, many of you will be in the chat. And there have been several reports – There was the housing accord, then there was the Task Force on Climate and Housing, of which a number of people on this session today participated, contributed. And there are others leading precursors that have led up to this. So none of it happens, fast and none of it happens with only one catalyst. There have been many, many, many catalysts. So note to selves, gang, this is maybe what it takes to have something become and emerge as such a pressing national challenge that a federal budget puts it at such a high priority. So let’s think about that. It’s important for me in my role at CUI to be always thinking about this. How do you actually marshal this kind of momentum? And, of course, the question for the session participants today is what difference is it going to make? And what are the kinds of actions that need to be prioritized? And how does everybody get on this call, of which there are several hundred … how are we all engaging in this, in what is fundamentally, as we all know, a local challenge housing choice in communities of almost every size in this country. We have a lack of housing choice and housing diversity. And so what is it going to mean for each of us in the communities in which we work, in the sectors in which you work, with the kinds of financial systems that we have in place with the regulatory frameworks that we have in place at every order of government. So if you were thinking, this was going to be a sort of slow paced, kind of chatty call, turn this program off and go find something else. Because this is the beginning of unraveling a big, hairy Gordian knot, not for the faint of heart. So I appreciate the people that have agreed to come on, to try to walk us through this and give us a sense of where are we this moment in time, two days after a federal budget, all sorts of other factors playing in on this. So I’ve asked the gang to talk about, is there one thing in this budget that you think is the most important thing, the most seminal thing, the most impactful thing. What wasn’t in it that you thought should have been … Missed opportunity. And then the third thing would be – Where do you think we have to go next in terms of prioritizing? Because, as we all know. You can have a lot of aspirations in a big, fat document like this, and you have a lot of commitments, but we’ve got a political reality, we’ve got a fiscal reality, and we’ve just all got so much bandwidth. So I’m going to ask, all of our gang to that are coming on the session to put the cameras on so you can see them, including Lisa Help, who you’ve had a little glimpse of and, I think I’m going to go east to west. That means … Carolyn’s looking quizzical. That means your first Carolyn. And, start with you. And what we usually do at this point is we each have a few minutes now to just sort of lay out those … the Answers. But I’ve also … I would say these folks like, say whatever you want, just get us focused on what you think we should be focusing on. And we’ll start with Carolyn and then we’ll go to Tsering and then Jesse … Well, actually, Cherise, I’ll duke it out between Cherise and Tsering and then Jesse, and then we’ll end up with you, Lisa. So you have a bit of breathing space to take another sip of coffee. Carolyn, welcome to City Talk.

Carolyn Whitzman Hi, Mary. Good to be here. So what’s working? Well, there are a lot more levers that are being pulled than previously, which is really great. I see in particular a few levers that are going to help low income renters. An acquisitions fund that everyone from FCM onwards has been calling for, acquisitions fund. That was a feature of Canada’s housing strategy in the 60s to the 80s. It worked. Good to see it back. A focus for the first time on renters’ rights and some negotiation about a tenant bill of rights that will be going into infrastructure funding and, rapid housing initiative has now been mainstreamed as an ongoing program instead of a one off. That’s really important to the lowest income folks and people who are most likely to be homeless. So that’s fantastic. What’s missing, still, is an emphasis on who needs what housing, where and at what cost. So, from the 40s to the 1980s, Canada focused on the needs of low and moderate income. Increasingly on renters. And that kind of analysis is still missing. So government land, great. Low cost finance, great. All of that has to be pulled together in order to provide homes at $1,000 per month. And the third question, I think, is sort of what next  or …. What’s next is implement, implement, implement … In 2022 budget there was a co-op housing fund that was announced. It’s still not spent. There’s been a lot of emphasis on the needs of Indigenous people. Get that funding out. That’s where I’ll stop for now.

Mary W Rowe So just stay with me for a second here. A couple things. One, this idea of levers. You know, we hear it all the time. Who has the levers? And, we heard the Prime minister not long ago say, well, this actually isn’t federal jurisdiction. Huh.  And I was so interested … his tone during the press event when he said, “well, be careful what you ask for provinces”, you know? It was almost sort of threatening to say, “well, you didn’t do anything. So we dragged ourselves into it”. But this idea of levers, who has levers and is everyone using the levers? I’d like us to come back to that. Second thing is this interesting point you made Carolyn about RHI, that we had something that was sort of provisional and a pilot. And now it’s been mainstreamed, right?

Carolyn Whitzman Yeah. It worked. And that’s exactly what should be happening. So you pilot something. It works. You continue it. Canada’s had a bit of a problem with scaling up what works, to be frank. The earlier point that you made … And you have to forgive me, I’ve been doing interviews since 6 a.m. this morning, so I’m starting to …

Mary W Rowe You’re doing fine.

Carolyn Whitzman I can only hold water for one thought at a time. But you did say something really important. Can you remind me what it was?

Mary W Rowe Just this idea that … Well, I think I was talking about levers and who’s jurisdiction it is …

Carolyn Whitzman Thank you. So the buck stops at the federal government. The federal government has something called the National Housing Strategy Act that says that it’s going to work to progressively realize the right to housing. And that means that the federal government should be using conditional agreements, as it’s done quite successfully with the Housing Accelerator Fund, in that case, to change zoning for municipalities, but also use its levers, its infrastructure levers with the provinces. Absolutely. Landlord tenant relations are a provincial territorial issue. Absolutely, this is not the first time that the federal government stepped in …  In the 40s it did and in the 70s and said, “provinces, you need to do better in terms of preventing rental” which absolutely, you know, when, 1 in 16 Canadian households were evicted over the five years between 2016 and 2021 you need to step in and say, what can we do to prevent evictions?

Mary W Rowe So I just wanted park that, you know, that this notion of what role does the federal government have, when in fact the jurisdiction is unclear. And as you’re suggesting, the leadership role that they can play, the fact that they could set an agenda like this and everybody is now chatting about it, it’s a very interesting leadership role, even with limited levers. Okay. The other thing point you made, which I don’t want to lose, is, it’s not targeted enough. And I think that’s, you know, you’re saying it was targeted to … I was I was relieved that it wasn’t just about ownership. I was worried about the cult of ownership, that we’re also talking about renters and tenants. But how do you actually move into the granular where … place based? Where are the interventions most needed? I guess that’s where the other jurisdictions need to step in. So we’ll come back to that. I’m going to keep going west. Thanks, Carolyn. You’re doing fine on interview number 28 or whatever it is. Oh, of course, the other thing is the implementation. I’m looking to see in the chat of Matthew Mendelsohn’s here, but, I mean, he’s the guy that had to live through deliver-ology. And I think this is the great challenge is … Can these things be implemented in a timely way? Let’s go to you next, Cherise. With the plants. Beautiful backdrop behind Cherise.

Cherise Burda Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this is the first time in a long time that I’m being asked to comment on something, and I’ve got a lot of good things to say. So, you know, I won’t, repeat everything that Carolyn said. I agree with everything Carolyn, mentioned. I’m really happy about the focus on rental. All of the incentives for rental, the acquisition fund for affordable housing. Absolutely. The first step to building more affordable housing is to save the affordable housing that we currently have. Those are all great things. The other thing I will talk about is, we’re not just talking about how many homes we need to build. We’re starting to have a conversation about what type of housing we need to build, where we need to build it, who we’re building it for and how we’re building it. And so I think a lot of the policies we were happy to see in the task force, help to facilitate more intensification, over, kind of like a tradition of sprawl. And I think people are always really surprised – Lisa and I talked about this at our last panel together … In the past five years about three quarters of our new housing has been greenfields … 67%, was in greenfield, sorry, and 9% was in rural areas. So about three quarters of our new housing is, is sprawl.

Mary W Rowe Over what period of time?

Cherise Burda Five years. [Wow]. It’s like … [we are still doing it]. Yeah, we’re still doing it. We’re a nation of sprawl despite … we see all the intensification and the towers and so forth. So a lot of the policies that are in the budget, really, if  … you know, Carolyn brings up this issue of like conditionality. So there are the makings to orient the funding, like whether it’s the Housing Accelerator Fund, and the low cost loans, the municipal infrastructure, you know, all the various tax breaks. We need to figure out how to orient that, and prioritize, what are really scarce resources to building the right supply. And I’ll just say one last thing. It’s a small thing. It might be seen as a small thing, but I think it adds up to really big opportunity. And that’s the host of policies. I was really surprised to see the number of policies in the budget to help facilitate the missing middle, because we’ve always just said, okay, that’s a zoning thing. Done. Right? Well, it’s not. We need the financing. We need the incentives. We need housing accelerator funds. All those things are in there to help facilitate more missing middle. And the reason this is so critical is that unless we build more, better density, we can’t just build … It’s not a unit count. We can’t just throw up one bedroom units in tall condos everywhere and say we’re done. Like we need brown-related housing that people want to live in, that is a real alternative to sprawl. Because we don’t build good density, then we’re facilitating more sprawl. So I’m really excited about that potential.

Mary W Rowe Is there enough? Are there enough measures in the budget and whatever other things that will roll out that will start to curb this? Do you think there’s enough?

Cherise Burda I think there are … Yes, there are plenty of measures. It’s how we sort of deploy these. And Carolyn mentioned like prioritizing … Like, she’s a big advocate for housing needs assessment across the country. She’s one of the few people who’ve actually sat down and tried to crunch these numbers. We know that B.C. is already leading in this regard. We’ve got a bunch of municipalities who are doing this, too, but we need a national housing needs assessment so we can, in a sense, do triage for what do we need the most? I mean Carolyn’s work with Heart shows that 40% of Canadian households can’t afford market rate housing beyond $1600 a month like, so … We need to be serious, you know, about who we’re building for, where we’re building, what we’re building, and the kind of conditionality around, you know, if we’re going to give low cost loans and things like public land, right, public lands a big deal, let’s make sure that we’re getting what we really need out of all of that … The subsidy rates.

Mary W Rowe Okay. So a lot of this is, you know, it boils down to, how how’s this going to get delivered and how is it going to get interpreted? And can we mobilize? Is this going to enable a lot of mobilization along the priorities you just identified? Can I just encourage people in the chat, make sure your settings … you are sending your messages out to everyone. There’s a little toggle switch down there. You can choose. Otherwise just me and the panelists get it, which is nice. But we really want everybody to see what you’re saying. So if you’ve sent something only to us, send it again to everyone. Tsering, let’s go to you. I think one of the interesting moments that we have finally reached here is an acknowledgment that the bulk of Canadian housing is built by the private sector. It’s built by people like you. So what is the response from the private sector about this budget? Does it give you what you need? What do you see as the things that could have been there that aren’t and then what would you see as priorities? And we really appreciate you coming on to CityTalk. Welcome. I think this is your first time here.

Tsering Yangki It is my first time, Mary. And it’s such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I think, I just wanted to preface, like, a lot of the views that I will be expressing, of course, would be a lot of my own personal views, too, along with everything in the experience that I bring forth. Also, privileged to be, on the task force, along with Cherise, on the task force for Housing and Climate, and to see that a lot of it was also reflected in the budget. First of all, I have to commend the government, and I think everyone felt the same, as this was a comprehensive and an ambitious budget that was very inclusive. On the housing side, it was a housing focused budget, and I think … we were absolutely pleased to see it because A) from a private sector lens you have to recognize that housing is core, whether it’s about talent, whether it’s about productivity … you need shelter first. And that’s something that really becomes a core. The fact that as a Canadian and as to what we want to bring forth is based on the human rights lens of what housing should be. So I think it was an ambitious budget that was brought forward. So absolutely pleased with that. Second, I think, Mary, you brought about the comment about the leadership. It was absolutely high time. I think there’s a lot of complaining. There’s a lot of divisiveness in the conversation about who’s doing what, who’s not doing enough. This was a call to action saying, “hey, let’s take a Team Canada approach”, which I really liked because I think it’s in our collective interest, of course, across the housing continuum, across all sectors, healthcare, infrastructure. It’s in our collective interest to work together. And to Carolyn’s point with all the levers that we have to bring forth so we are part of that solution and being constructive. And I think that’s a key component. How do we recognize the crisis? Here’s the solution. And how do we move forward? In the budget I think what I was absolutely pleased is right now we have to recognize we are in an economy environment just coming out of the pandemic that has been absolutely, really, really, challenging. Costs have increased. I don’t need to provide the data. I think everyone who is attending here is well educated on the data, on the increases, like DC charges increased by 60% from 2019 to right now. The cost of financing was $15 per square foot. Right now it’s close to about 75 to 80 bucks per square foot. All these are constraints and as to how we work through … So the fact that the budget had really recognized whether … we work closely with a lot of non-for-profits on … whether collectively or as to through leasing off our rental units. And we recognize that the financial conditions are challenging in this economic environment. So the fact that there was capital being deployed, whether it’s on the AHF, the affordable housing, as well as the ACLP, I thought that was tremendous. And we have to recognize the ACLP is a loan. So it’s a very smart and strategic way of how the government is lending money to be able to repay back in ten years, where you have affordable units been contributed. The tax incentive – I thought that was really great. The public lands … I maybe different opinions, but I thought that was pretty courageous – for a private sector to say, you know what, we encourage private lands because really it becomes another lens of competition. But I think it’s a really great way of how the public lands are being utilized to deliver housing, how that gets deployed, how that gets implemented. I think it will be great to see. But I thought that was great to note. The second point I just want to make is the fact that the budget also addressed about … not just in terms of what type of housing for who, but also in terms of sustainability and infrastructure and how it’s all interrelated and interconnected. I think it’s so important because every time what we do is the housing is … so when you talk about supply, you talk about housing, but you’re not talking about the schools. You’re not talking about the hospital capacities, about the roads. And someone in the comments mentioned about as to what’s missing. And so it’s about transit spending and about … Those components about transportation. I think it’s key on mobility that we have to think through. Absolutely, pleased to see about the CMHC program, because the government’s tool, I think, really helps with CMHC in terms of how capital is being deployed. And I think that’s something that was really important to note. What was missing is more investment and thinking on policy, on productivity, because I think we can talk about supply and housing. You can talk about who. But I do think that as an economy and a society as to how we can be more productive and what the investments are there, I think that would be something that was missing. On what’s next in terms of, I think, to what Carolyn and others have mentioned is about execution. We need things to be tabled and, legislations to be passed. And I think we need to be building because the crisis is only going to compound. I think from our private sector, the industry is ready to respond. But I do think that it’s all about timing and how things get enacted right now so that way we could be able to respond to the mandate that has been noted in the budget.

Mary W Rowe Thanks, Tsering. You know, again, back to … You were part of this blueprint task force. You were trying to make the point, and we can see it in the chat too, people expressing concerns around – are we linking this with transit? Is it integrated enough? Are we actually addressing the climate crisis as directly as we should? What is your view of that with your commercial colleagues? You guys actually have an impact fund. So you’re actually proactive on this in terms of trying to find investment. But the development industry in this country is actually … Is full of lots of small operators. Right? So how do we influence those kinds of actions?

Tsering Yangki And I think that one aspect is just the ACLP. Just thinking about that, the apartment construction …

Mary W Rowe I was going to say … break out the acronyms …

Tsering Yangki The apartment construction loan program. I think that is … It’s a very smart financial instrument, because when you’re talking about the certainty, like for a developer, whether it’s small or a large developer, you’re looking for certainty on the capital that’s being deployed. And ACLP requires in terms of, climate resilient, in terms of affordability, accessibility, you’re building into the fabric of the program what the social outcomes you need. And then, right now a developer would need capital. So you have low cost capital. However, what you’re doing is you’re locking it for a ten year term. So that provides certainty for a developer. So I think that that’s one component that I was really pleased to see that will really bring about supply and the right type of supply based on the social and environmental outcomes that the government really requires. Did that answer your question Mary?

Mary W Rowe I mean, I think, you know, we often hear this in the private sector. You want certainty. And I guess the question is going to be, we’ll watch the markets, we’ll watch how the financial infrastructure adjusts. We’ll see whether or not CMHC – whatever incarnation it’s going to end up with, whether it can provide you with more certainty. But there’s always going to be a perception from activists and from people working at the community level that the development sector is not doing as much as it could be, and that you guys tend to tuck yourselves behind an argument like, “well, we don’t have enough certainty” or I heard you and I’ve got to say, this is the other thing that seems to captured our imagination is it’s all about productivity. Yes. But the question is going to be, I think …  Who is housing for? I guess that’s the point. It’s not just for the development sector to make money. Right?

Tsering Yangki Yes, housing is across the entire continuum, as I had mentioned. And I think there’s going to be different stakeholders who are able to deliver the type of housing that can be provided. And I do think that … you have to recognize that I think what’s the government’s role? What’s the private sector’s role? What’s the non-for-profit role? We all have different roles that we contribute towards what’s required and what’s needed.

Mary W Rowe Right, right. I appreciate that. And that’s … we’re going to get lots of reaction from the chat. The other thing is I see we’ve reposted this wonderful number of 5.8 million new homes. And I had a series of emails this morning from people that everyone knows. Well, I was saying it’s not 5.8 million … So if you’ve got a different view about what the actual quantum is that’s required, please put it into the chat. And we’ll see if we can wrestle that to the ground. Thanks, Tsering. I’m going to now keep going west to my home town and to the university, where my father first emigrated from Canada, from the US to Huron University. Jesse, nice to see you in London, Ontario. And Jesse’s got tons of experience in this, and he’s now with Smart Prosperity. So what’s your take on it?

Jesse Helmer Well, it’s definitely the most ambitious budget at the federal level in my lifetime in terms of housing supply, and I think it’s very comprehensive. Many people spoke about what’s … Some of the good things that are in there. What I would emphasize is that the federal government is really using its funding power to prioritize things that it thinks are very important, both from an affordability perspective, but also, I think a climate perspective. And many of these recommendations are coming out of the National Housing Accord, the blueprint for more and better housing. So legalizing density, but, you know, making money that’s going to flow for needed infrastructure to support housing growth, making it conditional on doing certain things in zoning, like allowing fourplex’s as a right, requiring other provinces or municipalities to freeze development charges for the next three years, integrating changes to the … forthcoming changes to the National Building Code, using the pre-approved housing designs that come out through CMHC. So putting in some conditions around the funding for needed infrastructure. And they’re not prioritizing everything, right? They really are trying to focus on key things that they think are important, both from an affordability perspective, building where the cities and communities already are instead of building out new infrastructure and greenfield developments. And then you see it also … Conditionality around transit funding. Right? So there’s 3 billion in permanent transit funding coming up in 2026, starting putting conditions on that. So allowing high density near high frequency transit within 800 meters of stations. A lot of the best of what you see out of the transit oriented development approach in B.C., kind of be incorporated into – here’s what we’re going to do at a federal level in terms of transit, and then get rid of expensive things like requiring parking near high frequency transit lines and transit stations, and then also focusing on some specific pain points, like post-secondary institutions, and making sure that you can have higher density housing close to post-secondary institutions. So lots of good things, I think, in the budget in terms of legalizing density, making it easier to build cheaper and more climate friendly housing. What should have been in there that wasn’t – National Flood Mapping initiative. I know it sounds kind of boring, but it’s actually super important. I was in a meeting years ago with the Insurance Bureau of Canada, a bunch of municipal leaders. They were talking about flood risk. A couple of municipal leaders were like, don’t show me these maps of my community. I don’t want to see it. My whole community’s a flood risk. Don’t show anyone, you know. So there’s actually a very significant risk out there for flooding, erosion in some places, wildfires, right? … fire risks that the insurance industry, the private sector, is very, very concerned about. And it does drive up the cost of housing. And we really have to avoid building new housing in these areas that are very high risk. And I think we need to do more on that front. So I think that was a bit of a miss in terms of the budget. What’s going to be an obstacle? Federal, provincial, municipal cooperation. Right? This is an area where we have to have everybody working together. Right? They talked about it in the Budget – Team Canada approach. We’ve already seeing a lot of friction between, say, provinces and the federal government on a couple of these things. And Ontario, I would describe it as relatively minor conflict about fourplexes. You know, there’s some conflict, though, between the Premier and the federal government. And then we have an Alberta, you know, very significant conflict between Premier Smith and the federal government about trying to go around the provincial governments, if they can’t find agreements by January 2025, just entering into agreements directly with municipalities. And I think the federal government kind of telegraphing where they’re going, right. They’re anticipating there might be some problems and they’re thinking about how they can work around it. But I think if we have a lot of federal-provincial fighting, you know, lawsuits, you know, fighting it out in court, we’re definitely not building more housing faster. We’re not building more and better if we’re spending all our time fighting.

Mary W Rowe I was waiting till you would show your municipal colors, just briefly there, but I … Because … I guess one of the questions I would have for you, Jesse, as a former city councilor is, you know, is this an encroachment? You just cited a whole bunch of things that the federal government is encouraging, that in fact, local municipalities could have been acting on prior. And I’m just curious how you live with that, as a former city councilor and as a municipal government guy.

Jesse Helmer Well, I think you know …  I don’t think it’s really encroaching. Right? Is saying we want to fund these important projects in your community, right? It’s not saying like there’s a stick. We’re going to take something away if you don’t do what we want. Right? I think of policy instruments as like carrots, sticks or sermons. Right? And this budget is very heavy on carrots. And so it’s saying if you want to do these things we’re going to help you with your problems. But we want to make sure we get some consistency from community and community. So we’re really prioritizing the things that are most important. So yes, municipalities are and have been for many years prioritizing building housing along transit corridors. This is not like a new idea, but I think it’s encouraging it to be consistent, to push it throughout the entirety of the country, to take the best practices in many places and filter them throughout the rest of the country, and to use the federal spending power to encourage that, right? Instead of penalizing people, which is what we see sometimes …  From all levels of government to give a carrot, to say we can help you do more, but you need to do the right things. And let’s try to encourage more of the right thing.

Mary W Rowe Right, right …  Well, you’re perfect segue to Lisa, in terms of taking best practice, I mean CUI, we’re all about connective tissue and sharing best practice. And, sure enough, one of the provisions in the federal budget is a rip right out of the BC, what BC was already trying to do. So … But I am interested – this idea of when do we think that the federal government that said they were limited levers, although you’re saying they had spending powers. Yes. But they had over years suggested they didn’t really have jurisdiction here. And now they’ve weighed in fully. Can I just ask, a couple of people like Sue Utech and Craig, you’re both sending beautiful comments but they’re only coming to the hosts and the panelists. I’m trying to get you to change your toggle, send it out to everybody. You’re going to get really robust reactions from them if you change your settings away from “host and panelist” to “everyone”. Okay, Lisa, hit it. You’ve worked at various orders of government, you’ve been in the community, then you were mayor. Now you’re an advisor to a premier. You’ve got a perfect vantage point here to tell us whether or not you think if … What you think is there is enough. What did you like? What do you think was missing? And what do you think we need to be focusing on going forward? Go for it.

Lisa Helps Thank you Mary. Good morning everyone. I’m here actually not in Lkwungen territory today. I’m in Courtney on K’ómoks  territory. And I am no longer the special advisor to the premier. I was last year, and helped to develop some of the ideas that you now see in Canada’s budget. But now I’m, I’m running a startup within BC housing called BC builds, not Canada Builds. Also lifted from BC. So, anyway, that that’s my current role. I, I agree with Tsering. To me, the most important thing in the budget was the approach that we’re all in this together. This is a Team Canada issue and the framing right at the beginning of the budget chapter, noting the promise of Canada is at risk. And I think we can have all sorts of debates about what the promise of Canada is to various people in various parts of the country. But that kind of framing, to me, is, is the most important part of the budget. In terms of encroachment, you know, as a, as a former mayor, I think quite frankly, this is long overdue. Local governments have had many opportunities to use the powers that they have, which are powers to zone or not zone. And for various reasons, that for the most part, there are some exceptions across the country. That hasn’t happened. And it’s very difficult, as a local politician to stare down the six people who come and stand up at a public hearing and say they don’t want a six story building next to their single family home. So I think the carrots and the levers in this budget are really, really going to help with that. In terms of what’s, what’s missing, I was I was almost going to say, because you sent this question to us in advance, I was almost going to say, you know, nothing … there’s so much here that to say – “and only if you had also done” …  However, in in 2018, one of the most seemingly innocuous pieces of legislation that the BC government enacted was a requirement that every municipality in the province do a housing needs assessment. And we were all kind of … I was mayor at the time, we were all kind of scratching our heads like, what does this mean? Why are they doing this? But it was a very, very powerful tool. This goes back to Carolyn’s point. If, if, if there’s one thing that’s missing, although let’s just maybe have it as a follow up or in budget 2025 – targets. But you can’t just start with targets. So even just if the federal government could mandate every municipality has to do a housing needs assessment that tells us who in our community needs what kind of housing. And then now what we’re seeing in British Columbia is the province is saying, okay, and this is … I don’t think anyone’s quite realized the power of this. And, there’s some gestures towards it in the federal budget, because those housing needs assessments have been done. Now, while we’ve seen ten communities get actual targets from the province, but more powerful than that, with the zoning change or the legislative changes that the province brought in last fall, it will be a requirement in this province … And I think this is why B.C. is very lined up to partner with the federal government on the outcomes of this budget. By the end of 2025, each municipality in this province has to A) identify their housing needs and their housing growth for the next 20 years. Mandated. And number two, create zoning. So create official community plans and zoning aligned with them that meets those needs. That’s so powerful. So what that means is that there will be space in communities with zoning in place in order to build the housing. And so then we see, you know, the $6 billion in the federal budget that says there’s going to be infrastructure available. Well that’s great because we’re really already lining up what the needs are with the money that’s going to come out of the federal government. Same with transit. So I think that there’s just so much opportunity, and I hope that the provinces and the federal government can kind of get beyond some of the things that Jesse pointed out, because it’s not the time for those kinds of disputes. It’s the time to say thank you to the federal government. Let’s use all of these levers that have been provided. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that, we can talk about what’s next if we’ve got time for that. So thanks Mary.

Mary W Rowe Thanks, Lisa. Always great to have you here. And, and always great to see that kind of learning from British Columbia. Can we have everybody’s camera come on. So I can just, we’ll have a … this is the bun fight section – unmute your mics because we just want to have kind of … all conversation here. But I, you know, I’m interested about what you think will be different, and whether or not … whether this can have that kind of summoning effect, and whether or not there’s enough here are there enough carrots? And also I’m interested in just looking at the composition of the panel here. We don’t have anybody from Alberta on the panel (Just by chance). So what happens if you’re provincial government or premier is not supportive of some of this stuff? Jesse, you did some work with Kate about the challenges to Alberta municipalities. Do you want to just step in on that? What do you do when you’re in a jurisdiction that’s not that friendly to this?

Jesse Helmer Well, I think it remains to be seen, you know, how far some of the provincial opposition will take it. You know, I think everyone can look around in their own province and see how big of an issue housing is in every community in their province. And so I think they have to be pretty careful about how hard they push back. They might say some things now to try and get something more along the lines of what Quebec has in terms of its relationship with the federal government when it comes to delivery of housing. But I don’t know that it’s going to result in like, full blown federal provincial conflict that paralyzes action. So, if it if it gets worse, you know, I think the mayors and the councils and the city leaders in these various communities that are expected to build housing and have plans actually build housing, they’re going to have to go around the provinces and try and make things happen without them. Right. And I do think that’s obviously not optimal, but …

Mary W Rowe But this is one of the challenges with the Housing Accelerator Fund, as we’ve been seeing that the federal government was pretty brave it went and did deals directly and said, the hell with the rest of you, we’re going to do it. And now it runs counter to that. And then generating the kind of inquiry, the push that we’re seeing out of Alberta. Go ahead Carolyn. And then Cherise.

Carolyn Whitzman I just want to start off with a quick fact check. I mean, housing was mentioned 343 times in the budget … I did count. But there is a mandatory housing need assessment for all municipalities over 30,000. So again, another great idea that’s been grabbed from B.C.. Thank you. Lisa. And another thing that’s in there, just to speak to the provincial intransitive issue is that the federal government reserves the right to negotiate directly with municipalities about infrastructure, if the provinces don’t sign agreements, don’t want to play ball. So that’s actually really important and really kind of muscular in the plan, that kind of flexibility for the federal government. But I just want to point out, it’s one thing to do a housing need assessment, it’s one thing to realize is most municipalities that have done a housing need assessment that about 80% of the people living in grossly unaffordable housing are in the lowest income quintile. They can afford no more than $1,000 a month. It’s another thing entirely to stack up … there’s talk about federal land. Great. There’s talk about acquiring land. Great. But to stack finance on there so that non-market housing can double as, Deloitte and Scotiabank and Royal Bank and so many reports have said is important and in fact the two recent reports that were referring to the blueprint and the accord have talked about as well, there’s $55 billion, the biggest sum in the National Housing Strategy. It’s now called the Apartment Construction Loan Program. Only 3% of the homes that have resulted from that are affordable to low income people in housing need. So if that kind of low cost loans, that amount of money, and we do have, you know, scarce resources at a certain point, were towards low income housing, as is the case in the US, by the way, where there’s low income housing tax credit, which is very much aimed at low and moderate income households, as was the case in Canada in the past, which focused its direct subsidy to low and moderate income housing. I think it’s great to all the zoning, absolutely private sector, go, go, go. And all of the tax changes that are supporting purpose built rental – yay and HST –  yay. But if you’re giving direct subsidies and low cost finance as a direct subsidy as is government land, it should prioritize non-market housing, co-ops, public housing, community housing.

Mary W Rowe And do you feel it’s not doing that well, it’s not doing that explicitly enough. That’s the issue.

Carolyn Whitzman Well there’s an explicit affordable housing fund that’s $15 billion, 1 billion for rapid housing. Compare that with $55 billion in low cost financing. And really, you know, you have to judge a government not just by fine statements. And absolutely, the budget is beautifully written, but also you have to follow the money.

Mary W Rowe Cherise.

Cherise Burda Yeah. Thank you for that, Carolyn. I was trying to get at that in my opening comments about our … (not audible) I also agree that our public land is our big opportunity to scale non-market housing. And, I mean, currently, 95% of our housing stock is private market housing. So less than 6% of our housing stock is like co-ops, not for profit, non-market, even social housing combined. And there was a time in the 1970s where 25% of our construction was non-market housing, like mostly things like co-ops and not for profit. So it wasn’t just subsidies, it was financing for these not-for-profits to scale. But as soon as the federal government got out of building housing and managing affordable housing, we lost that steam. We’ve lost …

Mary W Rowe Do you think we should get back into it? I mean, that’s a …  there’s lots of comments here in the chat here about “are we being cognizant enough of what kinds of mechanisms we need to be creating to incentivize the market to create the housing we need?” One. Do we have enough … Is there enough housing choice? Are we meeting the needs of people with disabilities? Are we targeting, as Carolyn was just suggesting? Are we prioritizing the lower income community as dramatically as we should be? I’m going to ask, Carolyn, you got your hand up. Lisa has too. Let’s go to you next, Lisa. Then we’ll come back to you Cherise, if you’re ready. Go ahead, Lisa and then Carolyn and Jesse. And Tsering. Don’t feel left out. If you’ve got something throw in. Lisa …

Lisa Helps Yeah just wanting to build on the conversation in terms of low cost financing. The affordable housing fund formerly CO-I and partnerships. So, so BC Builds, which is the program and whoever gave credit for all the BC work or someone said and that was Lisa too … No, all I worked on, in the premier’s office, is BC builds, the fine policy folks in the Ministry of Housing did all that other great work that, that you’re seeing out there. But nonetheless … So BC builds, the focus of the program is deliberately to keep community lands in community hands. It’s a long term investment in the community housing sector, the nonprofit sector, but it’s really targeted. And it’s an end to all of the other work that’s happening in BC. It’s really targeted at middle income folks. So not the lower end of the spectrum that Carolyn’s talking about. However, if we can bring public land, if we can have nonprofit partners and if we can leverage both federal funding through the Affordable Housing Fund and our own close to billion dollars in grants that the provincial government put in, what that means is we build that housing now. Sure, some of it is close to market. 20, 30 years from now, that’s the non-market housing of the future. Those are the co-ops that everyone talks about. They’re so awesome. We love co-ops. They were built in the 70s and 80s. When those co-ops were built. They were close to market. Now they’re so far below. So I think there’s room for stacking.

Mary W Rowe There’s this continuum of peace. I mean, again, a lot of us look to your jurisdiction, Lisa, with great envy that you have a more robust not for profit sector building a broader set of choices, housing choices. And I don’t know, do we think this budget is going to make the housing production sector more diverse? Are we going to … are we making room for more nonprofits? Is there some, Cherise is nodding her head, does that mean yes we are.?

Lisa Helps BC’s no better, BC’s no better than Canada. Our percentage of non-market housing is 3.5%. It’s the same across this country. So we’re doing …

Mary W Rowe But I just have this feeling you have more not for profits building housing. Maybe it’s not as …

Lisa Helps Yeah that may be possible.

Mary W Rowe Yeah okay. Tsering. And then Cherise and then Carolyn and Jesse – I hope you’ll have something. Go ahead Tsering.

Tsering Yangki I just want to point out, I think the conversation on the low cost financing, I think it’s a fascinating one, just in terms of because we participated. But what we have structured … The West Onlines is a great example. It is on government land. It is on leasehold for  nine years. And I think the ability for the governments … And I think that’s where, we talk about partnerships but when they are models of partnerships, how will we be able to look at it and how will we be able to roll that out? And I think that’s a key component to look at it. A) it’s a private sector. Three private sector’s developing it. The units are ranging from 40% to around 100% of AMR. So really you have the whole housing continuum as well as in terms of market rental. All the units are interspersed. I’m not sure as to … maybe some of you have already walked through our projects, but they’re all interspersed and they are energy efficient Gold-D buildings. So I think that’s … those are some of the models that we have to look at as to how the ACLPA, the apartment construction loan programs, really allow to work about delivering those kinds … Mary, the second one that I just want to add, the other model that we are working on in Ottawa is in partnership with the non-for-profit. It’s a different model. Where it’s a vertically integrated community. But we do market, we are doing around close to around 79% of median market rent in terms of the affordability. I think it’s  around closer to 24% for our component and our non-for-profit partner through a forward sale, they are going to be contributing at close to around 59% of median market rent in the average. So it’s vertically integrated but across the housing continuum.

Mary W Rowe But the interesting thing is you’ve done it through a partnership. That’s the key thing.

Tsering Yangki It is through a partnership. And I think that’s key because I think we have to recognize maybe we may not have the expertise of the programing and services that a non-for-profit can show beautifully do it. We have to recognize that. What can we do? We can build with speed at scale and that collaboration and that partnership, I think that’s the model and that’s what we think about. And that’s not the only model. There’s so many that we can look at. But that’s what when you have these ACLP programs, it incentivizes and allows them, creates the market condition to deliver more. So I do think that we have to recognize that it’s easy to discount a program, but you have to think through about the value. And if there’s incremental improvements in the program, let’s do it. But I think that when there is a good program that works, how do we ensure you improve on it rather than just discounting it?

Mary W Rowe I hear you. I think that’s the question. Carolyn, Cherise and then Jesse.

Carolyn Whitzman Yeah, I mean, I would absolutely love if Canada Builds, this new program to use leased, federal land and possibly acquire more land … If it used BC Builds criteria because, as Lisa said, even if the current level of subsidies for building and finance for non-market building means that it’s going to be housing that’s only affordable to median and medium income families, research has shown that non-market housing stays more affordable over time, as opposed to these short term, ten, 20 year affordability covenants that happen with the private sector. I did want to mention two things in the chat that we haven’t mentioned yet, and which are really important. One of them is around student housing. Student housing was ignored until now both in terms of housing need and in federal policies. It’s great to see a focus on universities and colleges up zoning, making student housing providers eligible. That’s terrific. That helps to address some of the generational inequalities which are being talked about. But I do want to spend a minute talking about the other age range, which is talking generally about accessibility. There’s been so much focus on townhouses. And the thing is, I’m an older person, I’m an older person living in a townhouse. It would be great if there were more plexes and flats and small apartment buildings with elevators, as there are where I grew up in Quebec. So one of the ways to move towards more sustainable buildings, more, more well-located buildings, is to allow lots of small apartment buildings in all residential areas, not just along noisy, dirty arterial streets. And I really am excited about some of those zoning changes and building code changes that might enable smaller apartment buildings such as single stairs, which is one of these things that gets architects and me very excited about. So that’s really a sign that we’re moving in the right direction, towards more accessible units.

Mary W Rowe Yeah. As you just mentioned … Next week we’re doing a city talk with the Rick Hansen Foundation about how do we make the accessible city. And this is a prescient challenge as people like you and me, Carolyn, are getting older and older, the rest of them are staying young. But you and I are getting older. And, how are we actually accommodating the diversity of user, the diversity of person that needs to be housed? And how does that work? Cherise and then Jesse and I’m just going to suggest in the time we have left, you know, the chat, as usual, is fabulous with all sorts of people weighing in at a level of detail that’s a little mind numbing. Just saying. So, this is one of the challenges with this topic. We have everybody talking about it now. There’s probably not a dinner table across the country that somebody isn’t talking about housing because somebody in their family can’t find shelter or whatever it is. But I do think it’s a challenge for us to treat … To continue to talk about what’s the most important thing, and, and how do we actually keep the pedal to the metal. What’s a non auto reference? Give me a metaphor for … you know what I mean …. How do we keep the heat on here.

Carolyn Whitzman Electric bicycles … We need push bikes …

Mary W Rowe There you go.

Mary W Rowe And Jesse’s saying … Jesse raised the point at the beginning. About … What about climate? What about floodplains? Like we do have unintended consequences that can happen if we start to do “build baby build” … And then suddenly we realize what we didn’t actually think about schools or libraries or floodplains or all that stuff. So Cherise and Jesse kick us off here in terms of how do we make sure that we have some fidelity about what we’re … The problem we’re trying to solve for Cherise first, then Jesse?

Cherise Burda Yeah. I think getting back to, you know, who we’re building for and where we’re building. One of the things that we’re also or one of the demographics we’re also kind of missing, really, is seniors. And, you know, seniors are like … We’re all … I’m going to be a senior soon. Like, it’s one of the things that’s really important about seniors housing is they are staying in their single detached houses because there’s nowhere to go. [Right, because there’s no choice]. There’s no choice. Yeah. This is like double check the check boxes. Because if you give seniors good choices in their communities, which are beyond a long term care facility, which are beyond a small condo, which are like things that they want, like co-living, co-housing, lots of people working on this great stuff. Let’s amp that up. Yeah. And then we have millions of single detached houses that can be recycled or repurposed to young families and newcomer families, because right now we’ve got, you know, some provincial planning policy that thinks the only way forward is to, you know, leapfrog all the houses that we already have and build the same number of detached houses that we did prior. So we really need that type of a strategy that is surgical. And this gets to housing needs assessment. But we really need to be serious about seniors for both of those reasons. 

Mary W Rowe You know, you’re right, Cherise, that this notion of over housed, how many people are over housed. Right? And how do we use the existing assets we’ve got. We’ve got a lot of … just saying, you know, out my door here, a whole bunch of people working on commercial conversions. We’ve got a lot of empty space, like, how are we going to up the stock? I guess that’s the question. How do we actually look at where do we have excess capacity that we could fail? Jesse, over to you and then I’ll come back to everybody for a quick close. Go ahead. Jesse.

Jesse Helmer I think in terms of like what’s next and where the focus needs to be is we’re not lacking in ideas. You know, a lot of solutions on the table. It’s really going to come down to execution and cooperation. And part of that is, you know, people have their preferred solutions, right? You know, they have different priorities about what the problems are. We’re  going to have to try a lot of different things quickly, figure out what’s actually working very well and scale those things up. Right? And that’s maybe not our preferred solution.

Mary W Rowe How do we do that? How do we do that Jesse? How do we have a quicker response system if something is working, that we could then quickly replicate? How do we do that?

Jesse Helmer I think I think it’s going to require some interventions like this from the federal government that’s like bigger changes at a higher level that push that across the whole country. It’s also going to come to the provinces to do a couple of things, we haven’t talked about that because it is the federal budget. But like this is a very quick story. The City of London updated its official plan in 2016, you know, a bunch of the stuff the federal government is talking about now. Right? So they did this … It took six years for the official plan to actually come into effect because it was appealed. Right, right. So these appeal mechanisms that block the decision making at the local level, it’s just agonizing how long it takes. And we have to have some interventions to stop some of those things from slowing down a lot of these … So things like that.

Mary W Rowe You heard it here first, guys. This has to be our moment where we summon that kind of political will to get some stuff done. Two minutes left. 20 seconds to you, Lisa, then Tsering, then Carolyn, and then Cherise last. Go ahead Lisa.

Lisa Helps Factory manufactured housing. That was … it was good to see a nod to that in the budget, some investment … That is how we are going to build quickly. There’s massive economic opportunity. I like to think of it as home tech, and I don’t mean your home security system. Everyone wants a high paying tech job. We can make those high paying tech jobs in home building factories, and I think that … It’s going to be a ten year transformation. That’s my prediction. Ten years to get that going and scale it up. But I think that’s where the future lies in terms of how do we deliver quickly.

Mary W Rowe I’d encourage people in the chat, put your idea in, and lots of you already are. If you’ve got one, throw it in. Tsering, Carolyn, Cherise, quickly.

Tsering Yangki I would say just in terms of implementing faster on the CMHC program, because that’s really where some of the gating items are on the reforms. I’m going I’m going down to the basics because I’m in the ground game day in and day out …

Mary W Rowe That’s fine. CMHC speed it up. Okay, Carolyn.

Carolyn Whitzman Yeah, absolutely. Income based targets, annual reports. It’s great to have a need assessment, but then it needs to be followed up with targets and annual monitoring. I know you’d like that, Mary.

Mary W Rowe Cherise …

Cherise Burda Yeah, I think conditionality and prioritization is key. We have a lot of great stuff in this budget, but, you know, there are provinces that are going against it with things like new bills and planning policy that is mandating sprawl, that is actually mandating municipalities to expand their urban boundaries and do greenfield expansion. So how do we how do we get front of that? We get in front of that because the federal budget has a lot of carrots, right? But if provincial governments have cake, like how do we get strong carrots …  [We’ve got to get the cake!]

Mary W Rowe Remember, it’s all about the cake, everybody. Thank you for joining us on CityTalk. It’s just a moment for us to really harness the collective effort, which I hear everybody saying we’ve got to do. Keep the focus, keep the pedal to the chain, someone has suggested … that this isn’t going to be fixed overnight. And we appreciate everybody joining us for another CityTalk. And I’ll see you next week to talk about the Accessible City. Thanks, Carolyn. Thanks, Tsering. Thanks, Jesse Cherise, Lisa … , always great to see you. Thanks, gang.