Advocates call on Manitoba government to boost rent-geared-to-income housing units ahead of budget day

Paula Keirstead lives on a low income and worries about whether or not she could afford to stay in her home if her landlord ever decides to raise her rent.

She currently pays $922 per month for a one-bedroom suite at the Residences at Portage Commons, a former non-profit apartment complex run by Lions Housing Centres that was purchased last year by Alberta-based Mainstreet Equity Corporation.

"I live on a low income. I could maybe squeeze out another hundred," Keirstead said at the Manitoba Legislature on Tuesday. "I'm nervous. I'm very nervous."

While provincial subsidies of $1.2 million over two years to Mainstreet will keep Keirstead's rent from rising, future rent increases are possible when the funding ends. 

Keirstead's concern is partly why housing advocates are calling on the Manitoba government to fund an additional 1,000 rent-geared-to-income housing units next year, ahead of the April 2 budget.

Those units are where tenants pay no more than 30 per cent of their household income on monthly rent.

Shauna MacKinnon, a member of the Right to Housing Coalition, and a professor and chair of the University of Winnipeg's urban and inner city studies department, said there's a severe shortage of rental units and people who have the most dire needs are from lower income households.

"We've fallen so far behind and we've done these calculations with other groups and determined that this would be sort of a bare bones of what we need just to start to catch up," MacKinnon said.

MacKinnon said the additional 1,000 units could be comprised of public, non-profit and co-op housing through a mix of new builds and retrofits of existing spaces.

"It's difficult, for sure," MacKinnon said. "We have no illusion about that but again that is why we're suggesting that it doesn't all need to be done through new builds. Some of it could be done through acquisition of existing supply as well.

"It could also be done by supporting non-profits to expand the number of units that they have that are rent-geared-to-income."

In the bigger picture, MacKinnon said Manitoba needs 1,000 more of these units every year for the next 10 years.

Coalition members and supporters delivered the last of 2,000 signed postcards from Manitobans to the legislative building on Tuesday — one week ahead of the provincial budget's unveiling. In addition to more units, the campaign calls on the province to create a capital maintenance fund and operating subsidy to protect existing social housing so no units are lost to disrepair or a lack of subsidies.

"We're not going to solve the homelessness and housing crisis without government intervening for social housing," said Erika Wiebe, a member of the Right to Housing Coalition, as she dropped off the postcards.