The 2017 National Housing Strategy (NHS) had a significant blind spot: acquisitions. While the NHS focused intensely on adding new housing supply, Canada was losing affordable rental housing in the private market far faster than federal programs could replace it.

Steve Pomeroy has meticulously documented this loss (2020, 2021, 2024). At the national level, his research found that we were losing eleven affordable rental homes in the private market for every one new affordable home built with federal assistance.

Yet despite this evidence, the acquisition and preservation of at-risk affordable rental properties were largely excluded from NHS programs.

I remember speaking with a federal parliamentary secretary for housing more than three years ago, trying to make the case for acquisitions: financial support for non-profits to buy existing rental properties, stabilize rents and protect tenancies. Their response was one of genuine puzzlement: “But that doesn’t create any new housing, so why would we do that?”

The NHS was infused with the idea that new supply was all that mattered. It isn't. Building more homes is essential, but so is preserving the affordable homes we already have. Ultimately, what matters is not just how much housing we have, but what kind of housing we have and, specifically, whether it remains affordable to the people who need it.

It wasn't so long ago, in the era of the pre-NHS Affordable Housing Initiative and Affordable Housing Program, that federal funding was more flexible. The same programs could support both new construction and the acquisition of existing properties. While the NHS represented an important step forward in many respects, on this particular issue it was a step backwards.

That's why the federal commitment to a Canada Rental Protection Fund in spring 2024 was such good news. It represented not just a new funding opportunity, but an opportunity to change how we think about housing supply: moving beyond “supply, supply, supply” to focus on the right kinds of supply, at the right levels of affordability.

I want to tell the story of how we got here, from my own perspective.

Making the case for acquisitions

Before joining CHRA in January 2023, I worked to stand up the Ottawa Community Land Trust (OCLT), a project I had initiated years earlier while working at Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC).

The OCLT's mission is all about acquisitions and preserving affordability. At CCOC, where I served as Executive Director for 12 years, as much as half of the organization's portfolio of more than 50 properties came through acquisitions.

I knew from experience that acquisition was a viable and necessary strategy for non-profit housing, alongside new construction.

When I joined CHRA, I was delighted to have a mandate to advocate for a federal acquisition program.

CHRA was not alone. Steve Pomeroy, a respected researcher frequently consulted by federal policy-makers, was already making a strong case for a national acquisition strategy (2020 report). Toronto's Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program had begun operating in 2022, helping non-profits acquire existing rental buildings and supporting a growing community land trust movement. British Columbia launched its provincial Rental Protection Fund in early 2023, demonstrating the potential of a sector-led model.

Innovative private foundations, including the Hamilton Community Foundation, were already investing their endowments in housing acquisitions and were eager to scale up that work nationally. UBC's Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) research group had also developed an excellent property acquisitions tool.

Despite this growing consensus across the community housing sector, the federal government's prevailing “build, build, build” and “supply, supply, supply” messaging remained an obstacle.

In 2023, CHRA convened a working group of organizations and individuals ready to make the case for a national acquisition fund and define what it could look like. Our proposal was for a fund led and managed by the community housing sector, combining federal investment through low-interest loans and grants.

We knew acquisitions could be less costly to the public purse than new construction and could secure long-term affordability much faster.

We also knew what happened when older apartment buildings changed hands in the private market: tenants could face renovictions, rapid rent increases and the loss of homes they could afford.

From the outset, we believed the fund needed to prioritize Indigenous-led acquisitions. Even when it takes time to transition properties to their intended tenant populations, acquisitions can help Indigenous housing providers build their asset base and expand their long-term capacity. British Columbia's experience demonstrated the importance of this approach.

The BC Rental Protection Fund was our proof of concept: a sector-managed fund, backed by government investment, could be nimble, responsible and responsive to the realities of market transactions.

From proposal to federal commitment

Slowly, we made inroads with federal decision-makers.

By December 2023, we had reached a “just do it” moment. In January 2024, we incorporated the Canadian Housing Acquisition Fund (CHAF), or, as I prefer to call it, Canadian Housing AF.

CHAF was established as a new national, sector-led organization to create, steward and manage a national acquisition fund. Its founding members were CHRA, CHF Canada, the National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Inc. (NICHI) and the Housing Acquisition Fund society, better known as the BC Rental Protection Fund (BC RPF).

We developed a full proposal and gathered support from across the community housing sector, the private housing market and philanthropic foundations.

Our goal was to get a commitment in the spring 2024 federal budget. We asked for $3 billion. We mobilized the sector and our supporters.

On April 4, 2024, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister announced a commitment to a $1.5-billion Canada Rental Protection Fund (CRPF), comprising $1 billion in low-interest loans and nearly $500 million in grant contributions. I travelled to Toronto to attend the Finance Minister's announcement.

The following week, at CHRA's 2024 Congress in Fredericton, we presented the Canadian Housing Acquisition Fund to a packed room. There was tremendous interest in what was coming.

The CRPF commitment was included in the federal budget on April 16, 2024. But many important questions remained unanswered.

How would the loans be administered? Would the $1 billion in loans be managed directly by CMHC? We were concerned that this could create delays, making it difficult for non-profits to meet property closing deadlines.

What security would the government require? Would the loan component require government security registered against each property, building by building, or could we develop a simpler approach?

How would the national fund work with existing provincial and local programs? These now included initiatives such as Nova Scotia's Community Housing Capital Fund, administered by the Community Housing Transformation Centre (CHTC). We wanted to avoid creating an additional administrative burden for applicants who might otherwise have to navigate multiple capital funds.

How could federal investment attract private social-impact investment? In British Columbia, we had seen private foundations provide bridge financing. Foundations supporting MURA-funded acquisitions had also helped through loan guarantees. What would this look like nationally? Would investment be organized deal by deal, or through a pooled impact investment fund? If the latter, how could we accommodate local and regional foundations?

What governance and operating model would work best? How could we build on the experience of sector-led funds in British Columbia and Nova Scotia while creating something genuinely national, capable of recognizing the different capital opportunities and sector capacities across Canada?

Our core working partners, CHRA, CHF Canada, NICHI, the BC Rental Protection Fund and CHTC, convened a two-day retreat in Ottawa in October 2024. We worked through these questions and outlined an operating model that would combine the strengths and experience of CHTC and the BC Rental Protection Fund.

We were ready.

And then we had to wait.

A changing political landscape

December 2024 and January 2025 were tumultuous months in Ottawa. Sean Fraser announced his departure as housing minister, and Chrystia Freeland resigned as Finance Minister, on December 16. Fraser's successor, Nate Erskine-Smith, was appointed on December 20. Justin Trudeau announced in early January that he would step down as Liberal leader.

We began to seriously question whether the Canada Rental Protection Fund would ever be implemented.

On March 7, 2025, the federal government issued a call for applications to select a third-party manager for the CRPF, with proposals due at the end of May.

We finalized our proposal, drawing heavily on the BC Rental Protection Fund team's analysis and practical experience. But something significant happened between the call's March 7 launch and its May 29 deadline: a federal election.

In early 2025, it seemed likely that Pierre Poilievre would become the next prime minister. We weren't sure what that might mean for the CRPF. CHRA had developed constructive relationships with Conservative Party staff and some elected officials, but the party leader's public comments on housing had little to say about non-market community housing.

Instead, Mark Carney became prime minister following his election as Liberal leader, and the Liberals won a minority government in April. During the election campaign, Carney had proposed a new federal agency focused on non-market housing: Build Canada Homes.

What would that mean for the CRPF?

So, after having submitted our proposal at the end of May, we waited. Again.

In September 2025, the government announced that the CRPF would be launched under Build Canada Homes. We saw this as a positive development. CMHC's lending authorities and capacity to take on risk are more limited than those envisioned for Build Canada Homes, and the new agency seemed to offer a stronger opportunity to establish a genuinely sector-led fund.

But we still hadn't heard anything about our proposal.

Through our work on acquisitions, we had connected with several other groups that had also submitted CRPF proposals in the spring. We checked in with them. They, too, were waiting for news.

The call we had been waiting for

On December 3, 2025, just over six months after we submitted our proposal and the day after CHRA's Housing on the Hill event, I was running an errand on my bike in downtown Ottawa when I received a call from Ana Bailão, the new CEO of Build Canada Homes.

I pulled over and found a quiet corner in the lobby of a bank. Ana congratulated CHAF on having submitted the leading proposal for managing the CRPF and told me that negotiations on an agreement would begin right away.

Over the next six months, I came to appreciate enormously the expertise of the BC Rental Protection Fund's analysts and leadership on our negotiating team. I was equally grateful for the open-minded, forward-thinking approach of the government team from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada (HICC), Build Canada Homes and CMHC.

Together, we were building something that sat outside the usual government comfort zone.

Under the model we negotiated, CHAF would receive the $481 million in grant contributions. For the loan component, CHAF would have what essentially amounts to a line of credit with the government, drawing down funds as needed to make loans to non-profits purchasing properties.

The government would not have a direct relationship with each non-profit borrower or the properties being acquired. This structure would allow CHAF to respond to real-world transactions while maintaining appropriate accountability for public funds.

We met twice a week for nearly six months, including an intensive two-day, in-person negotiating session. Our working relationship was strong, but there were moments when I wasn't confident we would reach an agreement.

There have been many times in my career when I've looked around a room and realized I might be the least smart person there. During those six months of negotiations, I had that feeling twice a week.

The CRPF agreement was signed on June 26, 2026, one year and one month after we submitted our proposal.

But we were still bound by a non-disclosure agreement that prevented us from sharing the story, explaining CHAF's role in managing the CRPF, describing the agreement's structure or providing a timeline for implementation.

In my role as Executive Director of CHRA, I continued to receive calls from non-profits with acquisition opportunities ready to go. I was careful to share only information that was already public.

We began building our operations over the summer of 2026. We recruited key CHAF executive leadership, developed initial operating agreements with the BC Rental Protection Fund and CHTC, and began quietly recruiting an expanded Board of Directors and Investment Committee. Doing that work while bound by an NDA was not easy.

Finally, a starting line

On September 22, 2026, two days before CHRA's Housing on the Hill, I was thrilled to join Gregor Robertson, Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi and Ana Bailão for the public announcement of the CRPF and CHAF's role as fund manager.

It gave me particular pleasure that Mike Bulthuis, Executive Director of the Ottawa Community Land Trust, was part of the announcement. My work with CCOC and the creation of OCLT had helped shape my conviction that acquiring and preserving existing affordable housing was just as important as building new homes. And there we were, bringing this national initiative to life on the lawn of a CCOC property I had purchased back in 2012.  For me, it was a fitting place to mark this milestone, given how much of my own understanding of acquisitions and their potential came from my years at CCOC and the work to establish the Ottawa Community Land Trust.

As we've said many times at meetings of the CHAF Board and staff team, this has been a long road, full of challenges. We have finally made it to the starting line.

The real work begins now: helping community housing providers acquire existing rental properties, protecting tenants from losing their homes and preserving affordability for the long term. The fund’s success will ultimately be measured not by its announcement or the signing of an agreement, but by the affordable homes that non-profit housing providers are able to acquire and preserve, and the communities they continue to strengthen. CHAF’s role is to help make that work possible; it is the non-profits on the ground that will turn this opportunity into lasting results.

For more information about the Canada Rental Protection Fund and the Canadian Housing Acquisition Fund, visit www.acquisitionfund.ca.]