On first blush, a big federal move on housing

It will, as usual, take time for observers to fully understand the implications of the federal budget, but several housing items have captured analysts' and stakeholders' attention as important. Several items are critical to cities. Housing is a massive imperative, and I'm often in a difficult spot to respond to residents on how we can address it. I've heard and continue to hear the priority Kitchissippi puts on housing as a government priority. Simply, the City of Ottawa can't, with the property tax tool that it has, adequately address our need for new affordable housing, and the maintenance of the current stock. The federal budget today is a big step toward providing cities the relief we need.

The biggest announcement is with respect to the Investment in Affordable Housing (IAH) initiative. In this term of Council, we were forced to reallocate what I call the City top-up to affordable housing capital funds to deal with inflationary increases to social housing operating expenses. While we're using reserves to keep the top-up going for a while, there will ultimately be a reduction in capital funding for new affordable housing. In this budget, the government has doubled its IAH investment. On the face of it, this is fantastic news. I have heard that it will be subject to provincial matching, which means our work is still cut out for us. If, in fact, this is the case, we'll need to clearly enunciate to Queen's Park the priority that this has in our community.

There will also be $100 million/year for new seniors housing, another priority I've heard from residents. Early indications that this won't be subject to provincial matching requirements.

There will also be $90 million over two years for shelters and transitional housing for abuse survivors, with a target of 3,000 spaces.

A very welcome announcement is for $500 million for social housing repairs in 2016-17, though that declines to $74 million in 2017-18. Still, one of the biggest needs we have in Ottawa is to maintain our Ottawa Community Housing stock, and that of our partner agencies.

There will also be new bridge funding for the federally-constituted housing coops - of which we have several in the ward - whose CMHC operating agreements are expiring as we speak. This was an issue I heard a lot about on the campaign trail, and Ottawa's coops made this a key issue in budget consultations. It's not a permanent solution, and I'm looking forward to hearing from the coops about what else needs to be done. It's encouraging, though, that the feds have committed to work with the provinces on a longer term solution.

I'm pleased to see $112 million over two years added to the Homelessness Partnering strategy. Even better, the language in the budget documents addresses the need for mental health and addiction supports as part of a housing first strategy. Without those supports, many of us are skeptical that housing-first will ultimately have the benefits we expect to address chronic homelessness.

And, finally, it's interesing to see that the government has proposed a new "Affordable Rental Housing Innovation Fund." I'm not immediately sure how this would work, but it looks like the feds want to fund initiatives that address the market failure to build affordable rental housing units. This is good news, and they've targeted 4,000 units over five years. There is also a new "Affordable Rental Housing Financing Initiative" with a budget to provide $500 million in loans per year for five years, targetting the creation of 10,000 new units.

I've seen some very positive initial reaction in the community to these announcements, and generally share in the enthusiasm. At Minister Catherine McKenna's budget consultation, I heard over and over our residents' priority on affordable housing. It seems that the new government has listened.