Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising one of the largest amounts of federal cash for housing so far to Vancouver, one of Canada’s densest and most expensive cities.
Speaking in the city on Friday and flanked by provincial and municipal officials, Trudeau said the federal government had reached a deal with the City of Vancouver to build more than 40,000 homes in the next decade through the Housing Accelerator Fund.
“This deal will mean less red tape, more housing built near transit, more affordable rental housing and more density homes,” Trudeau said.
He and Housing Minister Sean Fraser did not specify if the homes would be single-family houses, multiplexes or apartments.
“Make no mistake, although we might be living in a housing crisis, it is solvable and it’s solvable if we put measures on the table that will actually result in more homes being built,” Fraser said.
Fraser said the agreement involves a $115-million investment from Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund and will help Vancouver City Hall streamline the process to build high density near transit, move to a digital permitting process and provide “continued investment in social housing for some of the community’s most vulnerable people.”
The largest chunk of the deal so far has gone to Calgary, which got $228 million, while Brampton, Ont., got $114 million. Other deals announced to date range between $93.5 million and $15.5 million.
It’s the latest housing announcement from the federal government, which is facing criticism over rising housing prices and whether its plans announced as recently as earlier in the week go far enough.
Trudeau’s speech comes days after housing affordability hit its worst level in more than four decades, according to the Bank of Canada, and after Ottawa pushed a new housing strategy that looks to revamp war-time homebuilding efforts with pre-approved blueprints in a bid to increase supply and reduce housing prices.
Fraser previously stated that program will include plans for mid-rise buildings, student and senior housing and multiplexes.
A housing expert said it’s not just up to the federal government and that provincial and city officials have a large role to play.
“The federal government can use these designs to streamline some (housing) programs, but to have maximum impact, we need the designs to also be pre-approved under municipal zoning and design guidelines, at least for some lots,” Colleen Bailey from More Neighbours Toronto said.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, saying he’d go through the details later, thanked the federal government for what he said was a tangible solution.
“We have over a million people that are going to be coming to the Greater Vancouver region by 2050. Now, to put that into perspective, that’s about 35,000 people per year,” he said.
“So the time for action now, we have to work incredibly fast and we have to be bold if we want to make a dent on this challenge.”
— with files from Global’s Naomi Barghiel, Uday Rana and Craig Lord.
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