FREDERICTON - Green Party leader and MLA for Fredericton South David Coon is calling on the Higgs government to be more ambitious when it comes to providing affordable housing. The current commitment is to increase the subsidized housing supply by just 1 percent by 2022.

“There are 5,668 households on the Department of Social Development’s waiting list for subsidized housing, including an increase of 758 since July,” said Coon. “The government’s target of adding just 151 units over three years is a drop in a leaky bucket.”

In 2018, there were 28,000 New Brunswick households in need of affordable housing according to CMHC, defined by the number of households paying more than 30% of their income for housing. Yet funding for the Affordable Rental Housing Program has remained stagnant over the past three years, at less than $1 million per year.

“I was appalled to learn that the not-for-profit housing developers have been informed that the Province will no longer contribute to projects with federal government funding,” said Coon. “When the need is so great and the cost of borrowing is so low, government should be making major new investments in affordable housing now. That means budgeting far more than their obligations under the bilateral agreement they signed with Ottawa as part of the 2017 National Housing Strategy.”