Manitoba needs help from federal government to build housing affordable for low-income renters: advocates

Housing advocates in Manitoba are calling on the federal government to redirect funding and help put shovels in the ground to build at least 10,000 new affordable units in Manitoba over the next decade, in hopes of addressing the housing and homelessness crisis. 

The Right to Housing Coalition made the call during a news conference at the Manitoba Legislature on Thursday, as housing advocacy groups gather at locations across the country this week in recognition of what they've designated as National Housing Day on Friday.

The housing groups want the federal government to not only invest in building more units, but also prioritize the construction of non-market social housing.

"When we look at the type of housing that's being built, very little of it is affordable to low-income renters," said Kirsten Bernas, chair of the Right to Housing Coalition. "Manitoba is no exception."

The Right to Housing Coalition says reports from the federal government's national housing strategy indicate more than 2,000 new housing units have been built in Manitoba over the past seven years through that strategy's main programs.

But only one of its programs — the rapid housing initiative — requires units with rent-geared-to-income rates that make them affordable to the lowest-income renters, said Shauna MacKinnon, a University of Winnipeg urban studies professor who is a member of the Right to Housing Coalition.

That means of the 2,000 units built, only 253 are geared to renters with the lowest incomes, Bernas said.

Part of the reason Manitoba is falling behind on affordable housing is a continuing reliance by all levels of government on the private sector to meet the needs of the housing market, she said.

"For the federal government, it's clearly not been a priority up until now … and the private market simply does not produce housing that is affordable to low-income renters," said Bernas.

The Right to Housing Coalition says at least 10,000 new affordable units need to be built over the next decade in Manitoba to help ease the housing crisis, including 7,500 in Winnipeg alone. 

Ottawa 'needs to change course': advocate

Manitoba's NDP government campaigned on a promise to end chronic homelessness in the province within eight years.

The province says it has housed around 1,200 people since taking office last year, and committed $116 million to build new affordable housing units and maintain infrastructure already built.

"We saw our social housing being boarded up, left in an unmaintained state," and the province is now acting on that, said Bernadette Smith, the province's minister responsible for housing and homelessness.

Between 2011 and 2021, the number of social housing assets owned by Manitoba's government shrunk, while the number of unhoused people continued to soar, said the U of W's MacKinnon.

But she also said the promise to deliver social housing can't be left to the province alone.

"They need the federal government at the table to provide financing," MacKinnon said, but Ottawa has "devolved responsibility to the provinces, and this set in motion a serious decline in investment in new social housing as well as in the maintenance of the existing stock."

After the national strategy was initially unveiled in 2017, programs to stimulate the development of purpose-built rental housing were launched.

But by 2024, Manitoba had built only 2.5 per cent of the affordable housing units needed in the next 10 years, said MacKinnon.

Her group is now pushing the federal government to allocate some of the existing funding available in programs to building housing for low-income tenants. 

"The government of Manitoba understands that it will need more social housing.… The City of Winnipeg wants to play its part in creating housing," she said. 

"But if the federal Liberal government wants to leave the legacy of housing it promised, it's going to need to change course quickly."