Affordable housing promise in Manitoba's budget 'a start' but not enough: critics
Ozten Shebahkeget | CBC News | Posted: April 4, 2024 2:15 AM | Last Updated: April 4
Budget promises $116M for 350 new units, renovations and repairs to 3,000 more: Premier Wab Kinew
Making it easier to find an affordable place to stay is a focus of Manitoba's new budget, but some in the housing sector say the province's plan falls well short of what's needed.
The NDP government's 2024-25 budget, released Tuesday, earmarks $116 million to build and maintain affordable housing units.
Premier Wab Kinew says $70 million of that will go toward building 350 new social and affordable housing units across the province, and renovating and maintaining 3,000 more units that are currently not in use.
But advocates with Manitoba's Right to Housing Coalition had called on the province to fund an extra 1,000 units of rent-geared-to-income housing in this year's budget.
Kinew, however, defended the commitment his government has made its budget.
"We're exceeding everything that they're asking for," he told host Marcy Markusa in a Wednesday interview with CBC's Information Radio, when asked about the coalition's demands.
The budget also calls for some help for apartment builders, including an $8,500 per unit credit for new apartments rented out at market rates, as well as a credit of $13,500 per unit for apartments deemed affordable under the provincial definition.
The renter's tax credit is also slated to rise to $575 in 2025, an increase of $50 over this year.
"Effectively, across the whole spectrum, we're helping people get out of bus shacks and off of the street," Kinew said.
"We're helping people in permanent housing move into longer-term rentals, and people who are renters to move into the situation of home-ownership."
'We definitely need way more'
James Heinrichs, executive director of Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation, says the latest budget shows the province has clearly identified the need for a balance between fixing up its existing housing units and building new ones.
"The 350 units is a start," he told CBC on Wednesday.
"Is it enough money? Absolutely not. We definitely need way more."
Heinrichs says his non-profit organization owns just under half of the 1,850 affordable housing units it manages in Winnipeg, of which 94 per cent are rent-geared-to-income housing units.
"We actually need approximately $40 [million] to $50 million over the next three to five years to really fix those buildings up," he said.
The WHRC will likely develop more affordable housing units thanks to the new provincial tax credit, Heinrichs said, but he added that solving the housing crisis goes beyond buildings.
"I'd love to say this is only about building new units and repairing our existing units," but social support for people like isolated seniors and those who've just escaped homelessness are also needed, he said.
'I need a home'
Richard Veley, who moved into an affordable housing complex for people with physical disabilities about six months ago, says he "got the luck of the draw" in landing his place.
"I should have bought lottery tickets," he told CBC. "The standard wait, I've been told by social workers and other people in the disabled community, is two years."
Veley says his apartment costs just over $1,200 a month, but he only pays about 30 per cent of his income to stay there. The remainder is subsidized.
"I'm on a disability pension, and if my rent wasn't subsidized, [then] I couldn't afford it."
Janice Houle says a lack of affordable housing pushed her to move to Winnipeg from her home community of Roseau River First Nation about two weeks ago. She's been staying with family in the city as she hunts for an apartment.
She's looking for a bachelor or one-bedroom suite that would cost $600 to $800 a month, but says that may be hard to find.
"I need a home for myself, and it's kind of iffy out here about places," she told CBC as she headed to an apartment viewing in downtown Winnipeg.
Houle says she hopes for anything that will help people find housing faster.
"Like these older buildings, they can … renovate them, put them up for housing units. That's how I see it."