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Housing has long been a pressing issue in Manitoba. Although the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation’s budget increased between 2011 and 2022, how housing needs are being addressed is shifting towards the market, with funding increasingly used to support privately-owned housing rather than publicly owned housing.
Three key policy shifts illustrate this argument. First, Rent Assist is an income supplement intended to subsidize renters’ housing costs in private or non-profit housing that was launched in 2014. As a universal program, it represents a substantial investment in housing support, but also a dramatic shift away from bricks-and-mortar provision of social housing towards subsidies to the private market.
Second, from 2016 to 2022, the number of units owned by Manitoba Housing decreased by 9.9 percent, and the number of units directly managed by Manitoba Housing decreased by 17.6 percent. While the management of many public housing units was transferred to non-profit housing organizations, hundreds of units were sold to private developers, highlighting a move away from public ownership.
The third change is the implementation of the 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS). The NHS has been criticized for failing to produce housing that will move low-income households out of core housing need. It also argues that, even if the NHS meets its targets for developing new and maintaining existing community housing units, the number of available low-cost community housing units will be almost 100,000 units less than the number available in 2015. Although data for Manitoba is not yet available, these criticisms suggest that the NHS will not address the urgent need for low-cost housing in this province.
At the same time, three additional factors have shaped Manitoba’s low-cost housing system. The first is the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a financial crisis for many households. The provincial and federal governments responded with temporary policy and funding measures, but provincial housing policy has not addressed the systemic issues that shape housing need. Instead, low-rent housing has returned to business-as-usual.
The second factor is the expiry of subsidy agreements for non-profit and cooperative housing, which requires housing providers to find ways to offer low-cost housing without ongoing funding. This often requires increasing rents and changing tenant mixes to reduce the number of deeply subsidized units. In extreme cases, the end of agreements may result in the sale of buildings to private for-profit landlords, as is happening with Lions Place in downtown Winnipeg.
Third, rents continue to increase, especially at the lower end of the market. Although the rent increase guideline has been set at 2.4 percent or lower since 2020, average rents have increased by over 9 percent each year because of exceptions to rent regulations. The consequence is that, as incomes rise much more slowly than rents, lower-income households are gradually priced out of the rental market.
Staff at the Province were asked about their experiences of austerity. They noted that austerity has played a clear role in decision-making about provincial housing policy and programming for the past several years. Half of the respondents said that program work in their area had been reduced, including entire programs being eliminated and tasks being scaled back, and 44 percent identified privatization and contracting out in their area, with one-third specifically mentioning the sale or transfer of public housing buildings to community-based organizations.
The result of these measures has been, according to 83 percent of respondents, a reduction in the quality of service. More specifically, 78 percent indicated that they were being asked to provide the same or increased level of service with fewer resources. The vast majority of respondents (94 percent) felt that the austerity measures implemented in their area led to a reduction in service quality for low-income service users. Only a small minority of respondents (11 percent) felt that the austerity measures implemented in the housing area would save money for the public sector as a whole. In contrast, 83 percent of respondents anticipated that the austerity measures would result in less value for money for Manitobans, and 67 percent of respondents said that they did not think the private sector would perform their unit/organization’s tasks in a more efficient manner.
Although spending on housing continues to increase in Manitoba, there is a slow but steady policy focus on the provision of housing through the market. The result is a gradual destabilization of access to housing, especially for the lowest-income and highest-need households. Without strong, long-term investment in public and non-profit housing, the resulting forecast for low-income households is grim.
Grant: Community-Driven Solutions to Poverty: Challenges and Possibilities - 2020-2027
Category: Housing and Neighbourhood Revitalization