Housing incentive program would offer Winnipeg developers up to $60K per unit

Developers looking to build affordable housing in downtown Winnipeg could be eligible for up to $60,000 through a new proposed grant program.

A City of Winnipeg report published this week proposes using $25 million from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund for a new capital grant program. If approved, it would offer grants of up to $35,000 per unit for affordable multi-family projects, and up to $25,000 for projects located downtown.

Projects that qualify for the affordable housing grant could be eligible for an additional $15,000 if they meet certain criteria, including having a letter of intent from a government organization committing to funding for at least five years. They must also offer 50 per cent of units as rent-geared-to-income, or operate as supportive or transitional housing.

"The goal of this initial round of … funding is to get more affordable housing units built and more projects built downtown," Mayor Scott Gillingham said in an interview.

The report will be debated at Wednesday's executive policy committee meeting. It states the funding aims to create approximately 600 units, with half of those being affordable. 

Gillingham said the housing supply is not keeping up with demand.

"This Housing Accelerator Fund report dovetails with our Centre Plan 2050, which is a whole redevelopment plan for downtown that encourages, emphasizes and focuses on increasing the population of people living in the downtown," he said.

In order to qualify for the full $122 million offered to the City of Winnipeg from the Housing Accelerator Fund, the city must reach its goal of adding more than 3,100 net new housing units, including more than affordable 900 housing units, within three years.

"We know we need many units to … at least take a dent out of the housing crisis that Winnipeg's experiencing," Coun. Sherri Rollins, chair of the property and development committee, said in an interview.

Successful projects must obtain a building permit within one year of the approval. Projects that secured a building permit as far back as Dec. 5, 2023 — the date the federal funding was announced — will also be eligible.

"The Housing Accelerator Fund is to address … shovel-ready projects that are underway – projects that might have been permitted as late as last December and to get those units out the door by essentially providing some top-ups to the economics of the project," she said.

How to measure affordability?

Yutaka Dirks, the chair of the city committee with the Right to Housing Coalition, said he likes that the program emphasizes the importance of building rent-geared-to-income housing.

The report also states that discussions are ongoing with entities like the Manitoba government and End Homelessness Winnipeg to secure more funding, which Dirks says will be important to sustain deeply affordable housing.

One concern, Dirks said, is "a weird lack of clarity" around the definition of affordable housing in the city's policies. 

Included with the report is a proposed bylaw amendment creating the Housing Accelerator Fund capital grant program. It defines affordable housing as multi-unit residential housing that is recognized as affordable housing either under the federal National Housing Strategy or the Province of Manitoba.

While provincial programs define affordable housing as below 80 per cent of median market rents, some federal programs, such as the MLI Select program, base affordability on 30 per cent of the median income of renters.

"Because it's taking the the median income of renters, it actually produces a rent that's much higher than 80 per cent of median market rent, or the provincial affordability guideline."

Applications for the grant program open on May 31 and will remain open until July 12.