Billions of dollars for affordable housing not making it out the door, non-profit advocates say

Urban planner David Harrison is standing in a field in Dartmouth, N.S., where, if all goes to plan, more than 300 units of sorely needed non-profit housing will grow over the next 10 years. 

Harrison has spent two decades trying to get more developments like this one built, but not all of his efforts have been successful. He worries the supply is nowhere near enough. 

"We're in a housing crisis here. It's a question of supply and affordability," he said. "I've not heard of a community in the province that doesn't have a housing problem." 

The Dartmouth project's hopes are built around a federal program called the National Housing Co-investment Fund (NHCF), which offers low-cost loans for developers working on affordable housing projects.

Harrison's job is to help the Dartmouth project get ready to apply to NHCF, perhaps next year. 

But four years into the National Housing Strategy, and with a new federal minister dedicated to housing, non-profit housing advocates say the NHCF needs a total revamp.

The program is the federal government's flagship initiative for building affordable housing, with a trove of more than $13.8 billion in loan money to build homes for families forced to choose between rent and groceries. But it's a trove some non-profit builders say they can't access. 

In practice, the NHCF is failing to fulfil its potential, national housing advocates told a CBC News investigation into access to affordable housing.

"I think it was a bit of a poker game," said Ottawa-based housing policy consultant Steve Pomeroy. 

The NHCF is administered by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which is the Crown corporation that administers Canada's National Housing Strategy. The CMHC is responsible for scrutinizing the applications from organizations that want to use NHCF to get construction loans, but Pomeroy says the CMHC's vetting process is creating insurmountable barriers.

"Three or four years on, we've now realized that's actually not working very well." 

The NHCF was launched in May 2018 with a target of building 60,000 new units and renovating 240,000 existing units across Canada over 10 years. 

More than 90 per cent of NHCF users are non-profits or lower levels of government, like municipalities. The program was designed to appeal to community housing providers, many of which were initially excited to apply. 

When municipal councillor Annette Groves talks to people in her ward in Caledon, Ont., she hears about the desperate need for housing.