A Social Housing Action Plan for Manitoba - Kirsten Bernas, Sarah Cooper, Yutaka Dirks, Lynne Fernandez,

The opinions and recommendations in this Shauna MacKinnon is Professor and Chair of the Department of Urban report, and any errors, are those of the author, and Inner -City Studies University of Winnipeg, Principal Investigator and do not necessarily reflect the views of the of the Manitoba Research Alliance (MRA), Principal Investigator of the publishers or funders of this report. [...] Expand the social housing supply According to the housing needs analysis conducted by the Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association in 2023, Manitoba requires at least 10,000 additional units of social housing right now to meet the housing needs of the lowest-income Manitobans (Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association, 2023). [...] The Thatcher government was among the first to turn to the private market as the primary housing provider with its “right to buy” policy that enabled the sale of social housing stock to private market purchasers. [...] In 2005 the Right to Housing Coalition described the failure of the federal and provincial government’s primary housing program to meet the critical need for “rental housing for very low-income households” (MacKinnon, 2005). [...] Supporting Non-Profit and Indigenous-Led Non-Profit Housing Providers to Expand Social Housing Supply Non-profit and Indigenous-led housing providers require subsidies to reduce rents to levels affordable to the lowest-income households, and access to government funding to support the development and maintenance of social housing is an ongoing challenge.