Let’s talk about size. Let’s talk about the size of the community housing sector, and let’s talk about the size of our community housing providers.

Spoiler alert: we’re too small on both counts.

For most of us working in community housing, we know the story – growth was going gangbusters until the late 80s and early 90s, when the federal government withdrew from new social housing development. Most provinces couldn’t fill the gap; in some the gap widened.

We went from social housing making up 15%-20% of all housing starts in some years to virtually nothing. We went from the OECD and G7 average of social housing as about 8% of all homes to our current position of less than 4%.

We’re seeing the result of those cuts now, with an unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis that touches every community.

The community housing sector in Canada is doing incredible work – but we know it’s not enough.

We celebrate each drop in the bucket, happy that the bucket is slightly less empty. But very few of us are operating at scale – very few of us have figured out how to open the tap and fill the bucket all the way up.

CHRA calls for Canada to more than double the supply of community housing in the next decade, and then aim for 20% of all housing in the following generation.

We have strong evidence of the positive impact this would bring. Maintaining community housing at just 7% of market share will boost economic productivity by 5.7% to 9.3% and add an impressive annual $67 billion to $136 billion to the economy, without adding to inflation.

By improving economic productivity, increasing the scale of community housing improves quality of life for everyone in Canada.

So why aren’t we moving in that direction? Maybe our small size is an obstacle to growth.

 

What’s the ideal size?

Early in my career, I often heard people ask, “what’s the ideal size for a community housing provider?” I didn’t have an answer then - I still don’t.

But I’ve learned a couple of things over the last 25 years – about scale, capacity, resilience, and ambition.

The easy answer to that question is probably “bigger”. We can’t get to 20% or even 10% of the housing supply by creating more small housing providers operating at fewer than 100 units.

Size is capacity, and size is resilience.

Years ago, I was lucky to work for Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC), which managed about 1200 homes when I joined the staff, growing to about 1800 by the time I left (credit for that growth goes to others at CCOC). I saw the difference that size makes.

Let me give you an example: a bad day when a hot water tank blew out on the seventh floor of an apartment building, flooding nearly a dozen homes below.

In the very common single-building model of community housing, with one staff in the office and one or two working maintenance, the whole team would have to clear their week to deal with that kind of emergency, and everything else would have to wait.

At our larger non-profit with a 65-person staff team, as Executive Director I was aware of the flooding, but it didn’t change my to-do list for the day. We dispatched some of our maintenance staff to the flood, office staff called our insurance, and others contacted tenants to check-in and talk about temporary relocation. Meanwhile, the rest of the team was able to respond to regular maintenance calls, including things at that building unrelated to the flood, we kept on signing new leases and collecting rents; 90% of the staff went about their day without interruption. That’s the resilience that comes with size.

The second thing I’ve learned is that there is more than one way to achieve scale. Decades ago, the presumption seems to have been that every organization had to do it all: property development, maintenance, tenancies, asset management, community development, and in many cases, supports and health care. There’s no way for a small organization, with limited staff, to have expertise in all those things at the same time. And it isn’t necessary.

I see more and more examples of community housing organizations teaming up to achieve the benefits of scale. The Community Land Trust BC is a great example, as is the growing network of community land trusts across the country: organizations focused on growth, development, and asset management, allowing other non-profits and co-ops to focus on operations.

I see organizations like Cahdco, Flourish, and M’akola Development Services offering their non-profit real estate development skills to the rest of the sector, and more inter-agency service agreements for maintenance, social supports, and other expertise.

These are all ways to achieve scale, build resilience and grow the supply of community housing.

While I still don’t have an answer for “what’s the ideal size”, I start to wonder if that question is one of the things holding us back. Maybe the right question is “what are the barriers to growth?”.

 

Does our ambition meet the need?

Imagine two parcels of very similar land, in the same town. Imagine two separate non-profits, each about to start construction on one of those pieces of land.

The first non-profit has maximised their funding from public sources, and they are aiming for 50% of the homes to be deeply affordable, at less than $750/month, another quarter at 80% of median market rent (MMR), and the balance at median rent.

The second non-profit has also maximised their funding from public sources, but they are aiming for a building with 25% of the homes renting at $750/month, another 25% below median market rent, and fully half of the homes at full value market rent.

Which non-profit is doing a better job at achieving their mission?

Most of us would quickly say it’s the first non-profit, focusing on more affordability.

But what if I told you that the projects are a different size?

The first non-profit is building 100 homes, 50 of them at $750/month, 25 at 80% MMR, and 25 homes at MMR.

The second non-profit is building 200 homes. They will also have 50 homes renting at $750/month, 25 homes at 80% MMR, 25 at MMR, but they will have another 100 homes renting at full market rent.

Now which non-profit is doing a better job at achieving their mission?

They have both maximized public funding and financing opportunities, and they are both producing the exact same number of affordable homes.

The second one, however, is also generating greater revenue, which will help maintain the building to a higher standard in the decades ahead. They can hire more staff and generate savings that can fund their next build.

Both non-profits are doing the best they can with public resources, but the second has also created future opportunities for even more housing. I’d say that the second non-profit is doing a better job of achieving their mission, and their ambition will create the scale we all need.

I don’t think I would have said that ten years ago. And I know we don’t tend to think that way across the community housing sector.

So, as we observe National Housing Day, let’s talk about size and our responsibility to increase the supply of community housing. We need to get bigger – towards 20% of the whole housing supply – the whole country is counting on us.