CMHC consults Northerners on national housing strategy

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is in Whitehorse this week, hearing from Northerners about what a proposed new national housingstrategy should look like.

It's the last of a series of consultations CMHChas been holding, across Canada.CMHC officials will use the information collected to craft policy recommendations that will be passed along to the federal government. There are representatives from all three territories at the Whitehorse meetings.

Housing advocates have long called for a national plan on housing to move people out of shelters and into homes, increase the stock of affordable housing an area the federal government has retreated from over the last three decades and deal with concerns about affordability in the country's biggest cities.

"The fact that the federal government is including the North is a positive thing," said Bill Thomas of the Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition, who took part in the consultations on Thursday.

He says he heard a lot of discussion about First Nations, and how they might benefit from a housing strategy.

"There still isn't nearly enough consultations and engagement with First Nations," Thomas said.

"It would be preferable for some of these [funding] allocations to go directly to First Nations,and let them work out their own approaches to housing demands.Because it's another way of capacity building."

Special status for the North

Nick Falvo, who works with the Calgary Homeless Foundation, was also pleased to see these consultations happening. He's done extensive research on housing in the North.

"They [CMHC] are asking questions about program design, how to finance construction of housing, they're asking for feedback in data gaps," Falvo said.

"One thing I stress all the time, and have stressed today, is the importance of special status for the North when we're having national discussions about affordable housing," he said.

Falvo said housing is simply more expensive in the North it costs more to build and maintain a house, and buildings don't last as long as they do down south.

CMHCis expected to make the results of its consultationspublic, next month.