Mark Carney just launched a $13-billion fund for housing

Since he took office in March, Prime Minister Mark Carney has been making massive promises about the future of housing in Canada. In an early pledge, he vowed to double the country’s annual housing starts to 500,000 per year. Last week, he took a big step toward that goal by launching Build Canada Homes, a new arm of the federal government designed to increase affordable housing supply.

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Now, the agency is armed with an initial $13-billion allowance and 463 hectares of federal land on which to build. BCH’s new plan includes incentives Canada has seen in the past, like the imperative to build multi-unit residential buildings. But this is the first time since the post-war boom that Ottawa will also play the role of developer, acquiring land, contracting builders, managing projects and selling units.

The name of the game is speed and scale. Geared to meet the needs of both low-income households and the middle class, the first wave of construction (roughly 4,000 houses) is set to break ground next year across six cities: Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Longueuil and Dartmouth (curiously, British Columbia is absent from the list), with purported capacity to expand to 45,000 houses.

BCH also has about 700 houses in the works for Nunavut, and $1 billion of its initial budget has been allocated to supportive bridge housing for unhoused people. With all this urgency to cut timelines and costs, the agency will be leaning on the use of prefab and modular construction, methods that are cheaper, faster to build and better for the environment.

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To lead the jumbo effort, Carney has tapped former deputy mayor Ana Bailão, who will act as BCH’s first CEO. Torontonians may remember that Bailão staked her political reputation on affordable housing during her time in office and was an advocate for municipal initiatives such as Housing Now and CreateTO. Now, she holds the hopes of an entire country of stakeholders.