The Federal government says it’s chipping in $1.33 million to subsidize rent in a 14-unit affordable housing building in Saint John.
New Brunswick’s provincial government will also contribute $480,000 in the form of a forgivable loan and rent supplements for 12 of those units, promising tenants won’t have to pay more than 30 per cent of their total income for rent.
The Victoria Street building, on which construction wrapped in the fall of 2020, belongs to the Unified Saint John Housing Co-operative.
The 12 units the funding focuses on are already full, with the average rent said to be around $266 a month.
That figure coming from Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, as well as minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Coporation, at a virtual press conference Friday Afternoon.
This announcement comes at the tail end of a week New Brunswickers learned they were paying more monthly for rent than they had in the past 43 years.
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Stats Canada reported Wednesday the average cost of rent in New Brunswick increased 3.9 per cent between April and May — the biggest jump since the number started being tracked in 1978. The biggest rent movement nationwide was in May.
And considering these units are already built and occupied, advocates say this step is too small.
“There’s still thousands of people with nowhere to go,” says Jill Farrar with ACORN New Brunswick.
“Fourteen units, but there’s 5,000 people on the waitlist for affordable housing? We need more for sure, and If it’s already full. It’s not really changing anything right now,” she says.
ACORN has been banging the housing inequality drum in the province for a while now, a beat they’re not sure is being heard considering skyrocketing rent.
“(We’ve been) warning about this for months now that this was going to happen,” says Farrar.
“People in the province are definitely feeling this and it’s turning into a crisis.”
She says the construction of affordable units in New Brunswick is not matching the rate of demand.
That rent control and eviction protections would relieve that need a bit, but the province isn’t game.
“They did the rental review, which didn’t really address this,” Farrar says.
“They said they didn’t really think that rent control was going to be needed here but people in the province say otherwise.”
She also points out that provincial review’s public survey didn’t include any questions related to evictions.
MLA Gary Crossman appeared on behalf of the province at Friday’s funding announcement but didn’t paint much of a picture of what steps might be taken down the road to help renters.
As for the feds, Hussen has been on something of an affordable housing tour of late, making similar announcements in Moncton, Toronto and other cities.
He says there’s more to come beyond 74 Victoria Street.
“We’re pulling all the stops,” the Minister says.
“This is the fifth consecutive budget we’ve increased funding for affordable housing and we’ll continue to do that.”
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