Building 2.2 million purpose-built rental units in under a decade sounds like an impossible task.
Despite the obvious challenge, a roundtable of housing experts from the private and non-profit sectors is providing the government of Canada with 10 recommendations on how to achieve this goal.
Canada will have to build 5.8 million homes over the next seven years to restore affordability, with 2.2 million of that being dedicated to purpose-built rental, according to an Aug. 15 report by housing experts brought together by the Real Property Association of Canada (REALPAC) and Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.
“It’s an enormous mountain to climb, given that we’ve only built 570,000 units of rental housing in the last 30 years. We are talking about tripling – almost quadrupling – in seven years what we’ve built in the last 30 years,” said Michael Brooks, CEO of REALPAC, an association of executives in Canadian commercial real estate.
If these numbers are true we are well and truly fecked.
