Auditor General Karen Hogan found that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and Infrastructure Canada have not collected sufficient data on their programs, which are designed to connect vulnerable people with homes. These two agencies are largely responsible for delivering the federal government’s National Housing Strategy, which aims to reduce chronic homelessness by 50 per cent by the 2027-28 financial year. But without data, there’s no way of knowing whether the government is getting good value for money, the AG said, or whether the 50 percent target will ever be met. One of the government’s key programs to get people off the streets is the “getting home” program, which is administered by Infrastructure Canada. The department spent $1.36 billion between 2019 and 2021, but, Hogan said, “the department did not know whether chronic homelessness and homelessness had increased or decreased since 2019 as a result of this investment.” Hogan said Infrastructure Canada has not completed any analysis to determine whether an infusion of cash the department received during the pandemic has met its goals. CMHC, which is the lead agency for the National Housing Strategy, has so far spent about $4.5 billion on various initiatives, but, Hogan said, “the agency did not measure changes in housing outcomes for vulnerable priority groups, including people experiencing homelessness’. “While the company knew that vulnerable groups were intended to benefit, it did not know whether those groups actually owned homes supported by its initiatives,” Hogan said. “For example, he did not know whether the units intended for people with disabilities were actually occupied by that population.”
“Cheap” house rentals unaffordable for many: A.G
Hogan also found that CMHC allocated funds to build more “affordable” rental homes, but some of those homes are unaffordable for many low-income people. Under the housing strategy, the federal government defines affordable rent as anything that costs less than 30 percent of a household’s pre-tax income. However, CMHC uses a different metric: affordable rent is rent that is less than 80 percent of the median market rent — the median value of all monthly rents paid in a given area. This means that a large number of rented homes built and paid for with public money are not meeting the government’s aim to get people into homes that will cost less than 30 per cent of their income. In the majority of Canada’s provinces and territories — eight out of 13 — households spend more than 30 percent of their income on so-called “affordable” housing. Meanwhile, despite being the lead agency on the housing record and the recipient of most housing-related funds, CMHC told Hogan it is “not directly responsible for addressing chronic homelessness.” Infrastructure Canada also said it is “not solely responsible for achieving the strategy’s goal of reducing chronic homelessness.” Based on those responses, Hogan said there was “minimal federal accountability” for meeting the government’s stated goals of reducing chronic homelessness by 50 percent.
