The P.E.I. Housing Strategy, released in February, promises 560 new social housing units over the next five years, but Rob Lantz says that is not necessarily the limit.
“We haven’t set specific targets,” Lantz, the province’s housing minister, told CBC News.
“We’re making significant investments and building and purchasing as quickly as we can.”
The strategy also sets a target of 10,000 new home builds over that same five-year period. If the province reaches that, 560 social housing units would represent 5.6 per cent of those builds.
That rate would be far below what some experts say is needed to solve Canada’s housing crisis. In a report last year, Scotiabank economist Rebekah Young recommended a strong move toward social housing as part of that solution.
Young pointed out that social housing represents just 3.5 per cent of Canada’s housing stock. On P.E.I. it’s lower, about three per cent. Among the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the average is around seven per cent.
Young recommends doubling the stock of social housing in Canada, bringing it up to that seven per cent average. In order to do that, she suggested, 20 per cent of Canada’s new housing builds should be social housing.
P.E.I.’s strategy would bring the province’s social housing ratio to about 3.3 per cent. Reaching seven per cent would require more than 3,000 new social housing units over those five years.
