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Winnipeg Free Press: Builders Stampede to Participate in Federally Funded  Affordable-Housing Program

If you help fund affordable housing in Winnipeg, apparently the builders will come.

A City of Winnipeg program was designed to attract new, primarily affordable and downtown housing units this year with $25 million worth of federally funded grants. But the city has now received requests for more than $160 million of grants, far exceeding the budget.

“We thought we’d get 25, 30 applications; now we have 66,” said Greg MacPherson, the city’s affordable housing concierge. “So many are really strong… viable projects.” MacPherson said his team will ensure successful applications create as many affordable and downtown units as possible.

Christina Maes Nino, executive director of the Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association, said she hopes the city gives top priority to deeply affordable homes with monthly rents of $900 or less. And she would
like the city to prioritize projects led by non-profit housing groups. She said those groups generally guarantee low rents, unlike private contracts that may only commit to keeping units below market rate for
20 years or less.

“Projects that are owned and operated by non-profits… are going to remain affordable over the long term, even after any funding agreement ends,” said Maes Nino. Due to their focus on low rents, she said non-
profits are also most in need of government funding to get their projects built.

“The rents that they charge (are) going to be significantly less than the market, which means that they need some kind of capital funding in order to make up that difference.… (These grants offer) a good
opportunity for them to bring down those costs so they can make some projects viable that wouldn’t otherwise have been,” she said. Read More