Solutions
45,000 new rental units are needed to be built every year just to keep up with demand according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Half of those have to be affordable units. Only 8,000 per year are being created now.
The National Housing and Homelessness Network is asking the federal government to spend an additional $2 billion a year on housing. (That represents just half of the one-month $4.8 billion budgetary surplus announced by Ottawa for June 2002.)
In the mid-1990s, the combined spending on housing by all levels of government was about 1% of their combined budgets. The National Housing and Homeless Network, in itŐs One Percent Solution calls on all governments to double their housing spending by dedicating an additional 1% of their budgets towards housing.
Under the One Percent Solution proposal, the building of new housing units would generate tens of thousands of new jobs and produce millions in tax revenues to governments.
The campaign also calls for an increase in the rent supplements available to low and moderate-income households to help them pay their rising rents. It also calls for new, specialized supportive housing and social supports to help homeless people to access and maintain housing.
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