Our Members

CHRA’s Impact on the Community Housing Sector

Over the past several years, we have worked with our members and sector allies to achieve real housing policy and program gains on the federal level. Many wins for the housing sector in recent years were achieved through our consistent advocacy efforts together.

• The National Housing Strategy Act and recognition of housing as a human right in 2019 was an outcome of years of advocacy work from CHRA and its allies.
• The Indigenous Caucus within CHRA facilitated the creation of the National Indigenous Housing Collaborative Inc. (NICHI) in 2023, which is leading and facilitating change for Indigenous housing providers across the country.
• The Indigenous Caucus and CHRA advocated for an urban, rural, and northern (URN) Indigenous housing strategy for several years coining the term “For Indigenous, By Indigenous”. Federal budgets 2022 and 2023 committed to $4.3 billion to co-develop and implement an URN strategy. We continue to advocate for the amount needed to fully realize a sustainable URN strategy.
• We released our Blueprint for Housing in fall 2022 - an extensive policy document created with the input of members to help inform CHRA’s advocacy efforts. Budget 2024 saw the federal government adopt the “Team Canada” language coined in the Blueprint and committing to a collaborative approach to solving the housing crisis, something for which CHRA has consistently advocated.
• We worked with sector partners CHF Canada, The BC Rental Protection Fund, and NICHI to create the Canadian Housing Acquisition Fund, designed to leverage government support alongside impact investments to protect affordable rental housing and increase the scale of the community housing sector.
• With collaboration from sector partners, we released an economic study, authored by Deloitte, which quantifies the impact community housing has on the economy and finds that bringing Canada’s share of community housing stock in line with the OECD average by 2030 would add $67 billion to $136 billion to Canada’s economy, and improve per capita economic output.

In Budget 2024 alone, we saw many long-standing CHRA priorities reflected:

• $1.5 billion was allocated for acquisitions through the Canada Rental Protection Fund. CHRA and its Canadian Housing Acquisition Fund partners are advocating for the government to work with us to implement this important initiative. The establishment of such a fund was a key recommendation from our Blueprint for Housing.
• Through the Public Lands for Homes plan, the government will unlock underused public land for housing, accelerating availability, and creating a mapping tool to track potential sites. The unlocking of public lands for housing was also a Blueprint recommendation.
• $20 million was allocated to modernizing housing data collection – also a recommendation included in the Blueprint.
• $1 billion was allocated to CMHC to launch a new Rapid Housing stream under the Affordable Housing Fund to build more deeply affordable housing, supportive housing, and shelters. This new funding stream focuses on supportive housing and is in addition to the $1 billion top-up announced in the 2023 Fall Economic Statement – both part of CHRA’s advocacy efforts.
• The federal government removing GST from new rental apartment construction projects – something that CHRA has long advocated for.

As the government moves to implement these measures, CHRA and our members are ready to help – the community housing sector is best positioned to address the housing crisis.

CHRA brings your voice – the voice of practical, community-based experience – directly to federal decision-makers. We need you to be part of our movement to increase the supply of community housing, and to make sure that everyone has a decent affordable home.