On September 14, 2025, the federal government launched Build Canada Homes, a new agency responsible for affordable housing development across the country. Build Canada Homes aims to work with all levels of government, Indigenous, private, and non-profit partners to scale up the supply of affordable housing. It aims to coordinate federal leadership, provide financing and support construction innovation. The agency intends to primarily focus on supporting the growth of the non-market, community housing sector, including Indigenous, non-profit, co-operative, and public housing, with the goal of doubling housing construction, restoring affordability, and reducing homelessness.
To begin, Build Canada Homes is investing $13 billion alongside access to federal lands, with four initial priority projects:
- Building 4,000 affordable mixed-income housing units in Dartmouth, Longueuil, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Edmonton
- Launching the $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to support community housing providers to acquire private rental buildings
- Investing $1 billion in transitional and supportive housing projects, in partnership with provincial, territorial, municipal, and Indigenous partners
- Building 700 public, affordable, and supportive housing units in partnership with the Nunavut Housing Corporation
Below, we outline our areas of support and opportunities for improvement to ensure Build Canada Homes can help make meaningful progress on ending homelessness and housing need, reflecting our recent recommendations to the Build Canada Homes consultation.
Areas of support
After decades of government withdrawal from affordable housing, we welcome renewed federal leadership in affordable housing through Build Canada Homes. In particular, it is promising that Build Canada Homes aims to focus specifically on growing the supply of non-market, community housing, including through initial investments in transitional and supportive housing projects to help address and prevent homelessness. This responds directly to our recommendation and calls from across the housing sector to prioritize and maximize investments in the community housing sector.
Canada’s current stock of community housing makes up only 3.5 per cent of our overall housing stock. This represents half of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average and is far below the recommended level of 20 per cent needed to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis. In the absence of a profit motive, the community housing sector can deliver housing that is affordable for the long-term and accessible to low-income and other marginalized households, with proven social and economic benefits. While it is encouraging to see Build Canada Homes’ focus on non-market, community housing, it will be critical to ensure that community housing providers play a lead role in housing delivery to help rebalance the supply of affordable housing across the country and ensure homes are genuinely affordable for those in greatest need.
We also strongly support the incorporation of the Canada Rental Protection Fund into Build Canada Homes. This signals the government’s recognition of the importance of not only building new affordable housing, but protecting the existing stock of affordable housing, and the people who live there. This also responds directly to our recommendation to help preserve affordability and protect tenancies by supporting community housing providers to acquire private rental buildings.
Currently, we are losing affordable housing faster than we can build it, due to excessive rent increases, demolitions, and conversions. Estimates show that for every home built under government-funded programs, Canada loses 11 affordable rental homes. At the same time, new data shows that 28 per cent of people who have experienced homelessness have also experienced eviction, with disproportionate impacts on Indigenous, Black, and other racialized groups and significant physical and mental health implications. Moreover, evictions are increasingly due to landlord factors or renters’ inability to pay ever increasing rents, while homelessness rates continue to rise at an alarming rate (with recent data showing a nearly 80 per cent increase in homelessness since 2022). This demonstrates the importance of preserving existing affordability and protecting renters from excessive rent increases and evictions, to help stem the loss of affordable housing and prevent growing rates of homelessness.
Finally, we are glad to see the focus on providing federal lands for affordable housing development, including through the incorporation of the Canada Lands Company into Build Canada Homes. This responds to our previous recommendations related to the Public Lands for Homes Plan.
Given high land costs, prioritizing public land for non-market, community housing can help accelerate affordable housing development and ensure it remains affordable in perpetuity. Ensuring equitable access for Indigenous-led housing projects is critical to help advance reconciliation recognizing the forced displacement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands and the resulting disproportionate rates of Indigenous homelessness and housing need.
Opportunities for improvement
While it is promising to see the government acting quickly to launch Build Canada Homes, with initial projects focused on affordable, supportive, and transitional housing, it remains to be seen how the government will achieve the scale necessary to tackle the housing and homelessness crisis. Further details are also needed around the role that the private sector will play in Build Canada Homes, especially considering governments’ ongoing over-reliance on the private sector, which has failed to produce housing that is affordable to those in greatest need and fueled the financialization of housing.
A recent report from the Federal Housing Advocate shows the need to build or acquire a minimum of 200,000 non-market homes per year over the next 30 years to address housing need and homelessness. This includes 100,000 deeply affordable housing units for people with low incomes (i.e., subsidized, rent-geared-to-income housing, including supportive and transitional housing). Recent research from Maytree shows this could be achieved through a $40 billion annual federal investment.
With an initial $13 billion investment and less than 5,000 units announced to date (only some of which are targeted for those in greatest need), Build Canada Homes will need to demonstrate how it will scale up its impact, both in terms of investments and delivery of deeply affordable housing. Moreover, it will need to enforce strict affordability requirements (in addition to requirements related to other elements of the right to housing, such as security of tenure) to ensure it is delivering housing that meets the needs of those most impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis over the long-term.
As part of Canada’s commitment to advance the right to housing under the National Housing Strategy Act and as a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the government is required to eliminate homelessness and realize the right to adequate housing for all in the shortest possible time, using all appropriate means and the maximum of available resources. This means that Build Canada Homes must go beyond its general focus on restoring affordability and reducing homelessness to prioritize those in greatest housing need by setting clear human rights-based targets, timelines, monitoring, and reporting mechanisms to end homelessness and housing need as quickly as possible.
Reflecting our recommendations, Build Canada Homes should:
- Set clear targets for community housing investments, including by prioritizing and supporting the sector to build capacity and deliver large-scale deeply affordable housing projects
- Provide a clear, income-based definition of affordability to ensure housing is genuinely affordable to people with low and moderate incomes and remains affordable in perpetuity
- Require strong renter protections for the development and preservation of affordable housing, including against excessive rents, unfair evictions, disrepair, and discrimination
- Set specific housing targets for communities disproportionately impacted by the housing and homelessness crisis, including Indigenous peoples, women and gender diverse people, newcomers, and people with disabilities
- Develop strong monitoring and accountability mechanisms to measure and evaluate progress on reducing and preventing housing need and homelessness
- Provide opportunities for meaningful engagement with people with lived experience of housing need and homelessness, alongside housing and human rights experts and advocates
Next steps
Build Canada Homes represents a generational shift and renewed focus on affordable housing development and preservation across the country, with some promising initial commitments. If implemented through a human rights-based approach, it could make a meaningful impact on ending and preventing homelessness and housing need and upholding the right to housing for all.
We look forward to further information on additional Build Canada Homes projects, priorities, and investments, including through the upcoming federal budget (expected on November 4, 2025). We will continue to work with sector partners to hold the government accountable to implementing evidence- and rights-based solutions to ensure everyone in Canada has access to a safe, secure, and affordable place to call home.