Addressed the severe housing shortage across Canada, Sean Fraser, the minister responsible for housing, today introduced a new strategy that makes use of federal public territories to construct more affordable houses.
Canada has launched the National Housing Strategy, an initiative where they say they will construct 1.4 million houses by 2031. This is, by far, the largest initiative on housing that Canada has ever undertaken to respond to the national housing deficit.
Canadians Face Deepening Housing Crisis
The housing supply in Canada has increased only in marginal steps, lagging behind this immigration-fed population growth. Dorobowalnie humanized worse than the pandemic that house prices escalated due to the high demand and low borrowing costs.
With recent research from the parliamentary budget officer indicating the need for about 3.1 million homes by the year 2030 to already exist, Canada is faced with a current housing shortage.
It is the about 75,000 people in Canada who found themselves homeless during the year that have prompted the Trudeau government to radically change the old practices which were focused solely on housing abundance and affordability, CBC broadcasted.
Trudeau Outlines Bold Vision
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the press from Vaughan, Ontario, indicating that the strategy was “the most enormous and ambitious housing plan the country had ever experienced.”
Trudeau accentuated that the plan aimed to do more than just construction; it was to ensure that the difficulties were being dealt with in renting and homeownership also and that Canadians who could not afford such expenditures were being supported.
Public Lands for Economic Growth
The newly adopted strategy is based on using different open public spaces. What follows is a proposal to provide these real estate projects with long-term lease agreements for federal lands, and this is a move that Fraser assures will still ensure that the lands remain under federal control while offering for the development of more units for affordable housing.
It is expected that the plan will be disclosed in the next budget on the 16th of April 2024 which will be carried out more rigorously later on.
Apart from land use, the strategy will have programs of financial incentives such as the Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program where owners of residences can access low-interest loans up to $ 40,000 to create secondary suites.
As a means of expediting the widening of housing options suitable for Canadians, this is what it is used for. Besides these, other ways to discourage asset price instability include the extension of the curb on residential property ownership by foreign persons until 2027 and the increase of tax incentives for apartment owners.
Another key area in which Trudeau’s government is active is the rental market, a countrywide initiative to grant GST exemption to any newly built student residences and to encourage sustainable development amongst the divergent communities.
Critics maintain Skepticism
Critics, however, remain sceptical. New Democrat housing critic, Alexandre Boulerice, was worried that the government’s efforts to expand affordable housing options were too late and truthfully, the prime minister has had his eight years in office without much progress in the housing affordability advocacy.
However, even under such criticism, the Canadian Home Builders’ Association acknowledges the effectiveness and the need for measures to comprehensively approach the problems caused by the increasing housing unaffordability.
In due course with the federal strategy applied, it involves important collaboration with province and territory governments that previously disagreed with both the mandates of and their domination over their jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, Fraser becomes convinced that solutions to housing problems in our country cannot be achieved without solving the issues that are connected with power. In his opinion, it is necessary to overcome the challenges of respective authorities if we want to satisfy Canadians adequately.
Last Updated on by Nikita Pradhan
