[URBAN NOTE] "Housing affordability, not hydro bills, is what’s really hurting Ontario"

[rfmcdonald]

I agree entirely with John Lorinc's Spacing Toronto article.

[A]ffordable housing didn’t warrant a single mention in Monday’s throne speech, which is astonishing for a government that presents itself as progressive-minded.

The reality is that this issue scarcely registers on the Liberals’ radar. Evidence? In 2014, when Wynne delivered her first Throne Speech, she pledged a continuation of the Investment in Affordable Housing Program (IAHP), a cost-shared venture with the feds. The amount to be spent: $800 million between 2015 and 2020 (the feds anted up another $400 million). In other words, $200 million annually, or a fifth of this latest shell game measure with hydro bills.

Which one gets the most bang for the buck? The politics of hydro bills are well known, and the premier has her eye on 2018. But according to the province’s own evaluation of the program’s results from 2011 to 2015, the IAHP moved over 15,000 households out of housing need, provided housing vouchers for others, and financed the creation or protection of thousands of rental or assisted units.

It was clearly a successful endeavour, and one that provides dividends: when families or individuals aren’t sinking most of their monthly income into rent, they spend and save more.

Indeed, if the Wynne government had chosen to use that $1 billion needed to finance the hydro cut to expand IAHP, it would have doubled down on these gains in the living standards of tens of thousands of lower-income Ontarians.