Nearly 100 middle class families in Winnipeg will soon have an affordable place to live thanks to a federal housing strategy.
The federal government will spend more than $18 million on the construction of Park City Commons, a six-storey building on Plessis Drive in Transcona, featuring 95 rental units.
Jean-Yves Duclos, the Federal Minister of Families, was in Winnipeg for the announcement Tuesday.
“This is the start of a new era in housing in Canada,” Duclos said.
He said rent for these units will be at or lower than 30 per cent of the median household income in the area.
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This is part of the CMHC’s Rental Construction Financing initiative (RCFi), which aims to encourage the construction of more than 14,000 units across Canada by 2021. The initiative will provide $3.75 billion in loans to help build these projects.
“This is a very new program providing much needed assistance to those who don’t qualify for what we call assisted housing, but can’t afford escalating prices of market rent.” Duclos said.
The minister didn’t give a number on how many more of these units are coming to Manitoba but said he hopes they can build as many as possible.
Park City Commons is expected to be ready in October 2019.
The federal government announced a 10-year, $40 billion dollar housing strategy in November 2017, aimed at helping 530,000 families who are in “core housing need”, and also aiming to help 385,000 people avoid losing their homes and lifting 50,000 Canadians out of homelessness.
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