Carney launches Build Canada Homes with billions for affordable housing

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the launch of Build Canada Homes (BCH) on Sunday, with an initial funding of $13 billion, in the hopes of getting more affordable housing built faster in Canada.

Carney made the announcement at a modular housing site in his riding of Nepean, in Ottawa, the day before Parliament is set to return for the fall session. He was accompanied by Housing Minister Gregor Robertson.

BCH will have the mandate of building and financing affordable housing — defined as monthly rent or mortgage being no more than 30 per cent of pretax household income — for middle-income workers to people at the lower end of the income scale.

Those could include minimum-wage workers, seniors on a fixed income, students or people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.

The idea is to build affordable housing at scale — ranging from transitional housing to community housing and multi-unit affordable housing — but excluding detached, single-family homes, according to a government background document provided by officials.

As a first step, BCH is partnering with Canada Lands Company to develop six sites across the country to build 4,000 factory-built homes on federal lands. A senior government official said construction is likely expected to start in 2026 on those specific sites.

But it could take years after that before the first tenants or homeowners will be able to move into those new affordable homes, admitted the senior government official.

Of the $13 billion in initial spending, $1.5 billion will be used by the Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect existing affordable rental housing and $1 billion will be reserved specifically for transitional housing for people who may experience homelessness.

BCH will also be partnering with Nunavut Housing Corporation to help build over 700 affordable housing units in the North, where there is a crucial need for more housing.

Earlier in the day, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre ridiculed the idea of getting more affordable housing built in Canada by adding yet another layer of bureaucracy to the mix.

“We have the builders, we have the trades, we have the companies. They have the money, they’d love to get building. What’s standing in the way is bureaucracy, and so Mark Carney’s solution is to add another bureaucracy that will only slow things down,” he said.

“It took him six months to set up a new office, an office that has not built a single new home,” added Poilievre, in a speech to his MPs during a caucus meeting.

A senior government official said the existing affordable housing programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)’s Affordable Housing Fund, will eventually be folded into BCH once their current funding has dried up.

“The idea is that, as we go forward and in terms of future looking, this becomes the arm for affordable housing projects,” said the official during a technical briefing session for media.

National Post calevesque@postmedia.com

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