Manitoba has financial tools to fix housing crisis, needs political will: report

The province of Manitoba already has the financial tools it needs to address homelessness and the housing crisis — it just needs the political will to get the job done, a new report from a housing advocacy group says.

The Right to Housing Coalition released a 44-page report published with the Canada Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba on Tuesday that says the province can finance new and existing social housing using one of its Crown corporations, and should consider the report's recommendations as it prepares its 2024 budget.

"It's time for Manitoba to stop relying on the private market to produce low-rent housing," said Kirsten Bernas, the chair of the provincial committee of the Right to Housing Coalition, at a Tuesday news conference. 

"This approach taken over the last 30 years has clearly failed, and there are growing calls across the country for governments at all levels to reinvest in non-market social housing."

With close to 6,000 low-income Manitoba households on the waitlist for social housing, the report says the government should turn to the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation, a Crown corporation created in the 1960s with a mandate to ensure housing is affordable for low-income Manitobans.

"Government provision of social housing is not a new idea," said the Right to Housing Coalition's Lynne Fernandez, the report's author, at the news conference.

"We need to once and for all reorient our political compass, find the courage to take up the tools we have in hand and start building."

Fernandez says the province's housing corporation already has the strategies the province needs to address the housing crisis, and her report outlines ways the government can pay for an investment in social housing.

4 budget priorities

Fernandez says the province should focus on four priorities identified in the report as it prepares its upcoming budget:

• Take on lower-interest government debt to invest in new and existing public housing, use self-supporting debt and continue to take advantage of existing federal programs. Those approaches could cover some of the cost of borrowing to invest in social infrastructure, and to "build and maintain public-housing assets that offset government debt on the balance sheet," the report says.
• Provide operating funds to extend agreements with non-profits housing providers that are set to expire and create an operating subsidy program that would support social housing operations.
• Make sure land is available for new social housing by increasing land bank holdings ("land banking" is the practice of purchasing and holding land for development), create an acquisition fund to buy existing affordable housing, and "expand the menu" of which buildings the province can acquire for social housing to include empty office buildings, hotels and motels.
• Support non-profits that work to supply housing by facilitating land trusts, housing co-ops, new construction of social housing and acquisition of existing buildings.

"Meeting these four budget priorities … would show that this government is serious about fulfilling Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation's mandate," Fernandez said.

The report released Tuesday is a followup to a social housing action plan released by the coalition last September, which called on the province to increase its social housing supply by 1,000 units annually for at least 10 years.

Titled "Thinking Inside the Box: Rediscovering How to Build Social Housing in Manitoba," the new report is intended to offer possible ways the provincial government could finance that plan.

"There it was as plain as day — all the tools we needed … were hiding right there in plain sight," Fernandez said at the news conference.

"Forget the private market, quit looking for some magical formula. The only working strategy is inside the public and non-profit box. We know how to do this."

The NDP government's first provincial budget will be announced April 2, the province announced Monday. Bernas said the coalition has sent the report to the province's finance minister and housing minister.