The Housing Accelerator Fund may be accelerating housing. But not necessarily how the federal government says it is
The Housing Accelerator Fund may be accelerating housing. But not necessarily how the federal government says it is
Many of the programs claimed to be incentivized by the federal government were already in the works — but the program provides crucial funding for city approvals capacity and infrastructure
An analysis of five municipalities’ Housing Accelerator Fund applications found many initiatives claimed to be incentivized by the program weren’t new initiatives.
The federal government has touted the program in the media as changing the national conversation on housing, “helping cut red tape and fast track at least 100,000 permitted new homes over the first three years” and will “lead to the creation of over 250,000 permitted new homes … over the next decade.”
A Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation news release announcing the HAF deal with Burnaby attributes a quote to housing minister Sean Fraser saying the program will “help fast track close to 1,300 homes in the next three years and over 11,300 homes over the next decade.”
“By working with cities, mayors, and all levels of government, we are helping to get more homes built for Canadians at prices they can afford,” the quote continues.
More recently, Fraser has credited the program with “the largest upzoning in the history of this country.”
“The fund dramatically out-performed my own very high expectations,” Fraser told The Backbench podcast.
Who gets credit?
But The Bind’s analysis of applications in Burnaby, Kelowna, Richmond, Surrey, and Vancouver, obtained through freedom-of-information requests, raise questions about how much credit the federal government can take for the policy changes attributed to the program.
The five cities proposed a combined 38 initiatives, projected to generate approvals for 8,824 units of housing beyond what the cities would have otherwise approved. In the application forms submitted by cities to the CMHC, cities were asked to provide three- and 10-year projections for “HAF incented” units for each initiative.
But many of those initiatives were already in the works either entirely or in part.
After reviewing the applications and searching the cities’ websites for past mentions of each initiative, The Bind broke the initiatives down into four categories:
Initiatives incentivized: Initiatives for which no other origin outside the HAF could be found. These accounted for 17% of all 8,824 projected units.
Initiatives partially incentivized: Those in which some aspects appear to be incentivized by the HAF, while others had clear origins outside the program. These accounted for 16% of the projected units.
Initiatives with HAF justification: Initiatives that began outside the HAF, but which had some level of justification in the application for how the HAF would assist, ranging from vague gestures to specific actions the funds would go towards. These accounted for 32% of the units.
Initiatives not incentivized or justified: Initiatives with no connection to HAF, whether in origin or in justification for the funding. These accounted for 36% of the units.
Initiatives incentivized
Eight initiatives were found to be entirely new programs with no work found on the initiatives from extensive searches of city websites prior to HAF program launching in March 2023. Of those six, three initiatives included justification for federal funding in the application, while three initiatives included no justification for the funding.
For instance, Richmond, Kelowna and Surrey each had an initiative with grants or fee discounts for developers on eligible projects that would be funded through the HAF program.
Richmond also had an initiative to create partnerships with non-profits to expedite below-market housing that appeared to be new and which had a specific funding ask for the program: staffing.
Initiatives partially incentivized
Six initiatives were found to have been partially incentivized by the program, with some pieces of the initiatives appearing to be new and other aspects having begun prior to the HAF program launching.
For instance, the City of Surrey includes an initiative to densify around transit.
But only a fraction of the actions in that initiative appears to be new. Work on parking requirements began as early as 2021; density around transit had been underway since 2020; and the OCP review is part of a regular 10-year cycle. Reviews of several neighbourhood plans around those intended to be reviewed through the HAF application were already underway or completed, suggesting ongoing work on neighbourhood plan reviews.
Another Surrey initiative around missing middle housing and 15-minute cities is almost entirely taken from the city’s climate strategy. While this strategy was only approved in July 2023, strategy planning documents as early as 2021 show this policy as a popular option that the city had been planning on implementing. What appears to be new in this initiative is pre-approved plans for accessory dwelling units.
Initiatives with HAF justification
Ten initiatives proposed by the five cities had begun prior to the HAF program launch, but had some justification in the application for HAF funding.
That justification ranged, however, from vague gestures to specifics.
On the latter end of that spectrum, Kelowna’s program to partner with non-profits and developers to preserve or build housing is decades old — however, the city states that funding from the HAF would go towards acquiring more land.
In Surrey, a project proposing to shift some of its approvals to a professional reliance model — rather than the city closely examining every application, it would take less of a hands-on approach with “certified professionals” who have demonstrated competence to the city.
This initiative arose out of an October 2022 report by KPMG, which the city had commissioned the year prior to evaluate expanding its professional reliance program. The application didn’t provide a justification for HAF funding.
However, the city said in an emailed statement that it has implemented “several” of the recommendations from that report, but that it will “begin implementing specific recommendations related to professional reliance, on an accelerated basis (made possible by the HAF).”
And a Burnaby initiative to streamline the development approval process had already completed its initial phase by the time the HAF application was submitted, but the application noted that HAF funding would help to “complete additional process improvements that were not achieved in Phase 1.”
But many of the justifications were also vague, such as a Richmond initiative to review parking requirements — building on parking changes in 2022 with a review coming with “support of HAF funding,” without saying how the funding would support the review. Similarly, a Kelowna initiative on infill housing was announced in February 2023, before the HAF program launched, but the application stated without specifics that some of the work would be “supported by” HAF funding.
Initiatives not incentivized or justified
Fifteen of the initiatives reviewed fell under this category, making up nearly two-fifths of all initiatives — and more than 36% of all units between the 38 initiatives.
Most of these units were in Vancouver, where all seven initiatives fell under this category.
This includes a project to streamline permit conditions, which began in January 2023, with one piece of the initiative implemented in December 2022. Another initiative was simply implementation of the Broadway Plan, which was approved in June 2022 and took effect in September that year.
A third initiative to streamline missing middle housing included pre-zoning the Cambie Corridor, which was the second phase of implementation for the 2018 Cambie Corridor Plan, and consolidating nine RS zones down to one and allowing up to six units on single lots, both of which began with a council motion in January 2022.
The closest thing the city has to a new initiative is an initiative to optimize below-market housing policies. While the project began in spring 2023, it is a review of the Moderate Income Rental Housing Pilot Project (MIRHPP) — and as a pilot program, the city had always planned a review.
Doesn’t necessarily go against the program
The response by cities to questions about how many units are attributable to the HAF, including from the City of Vancouver, is that they comply with the program’s cut-off date. But the cut-off date is in April 2022, after Vancouver’s January 2022 motion and well after the 2018 Cambie Corridor Plan was finalized.
The cut-off date is also supposed to be an exception.
“All initiatives included within the action plan should be new initiatives that have not yet started. In exceptional circumstances, CMHC may be willing to consider initiatives that started after the 2022 federal budget (April 7, 2022),” reads the pre-application guide for the first round of funding, which was provided to The Bind by the City of Richmond.
(The pre-application guide for the second round of funding notes that “a majority” of initiatives should not have begun prior to April 16, 2024.)
Nevertheless, Richmond noted that three of its eight initiatives, “in consultation with CMHC,” began in 2022. The City of Burnaby, meanwhile, noted that its initiatives “had not yet been fully implemented” by April 7, 2022, making those initiatives eligible.
The City of Surrey said its HAF plan “consists of both new initiatives and planned initiatives that had not yet started.”
An issue of branding
None of this is to suggest the HAF is a bad program — it’s an issue of marketing.
Where the federal government presents it as a program that is pushing cities to change their practices, it could more accurately be described as a program providing funding for under-resourced cities if they can show that they are working to increase housing supply.
In response to questions from The Bind, cities spoke of planning department resources, an issue planning departments have struggled with for some time. This has become particularly acute in the last year, as provincial legislation mandating cities to allow density around rapid transit stops and to allow multiplexes in single lots.
Cities across the province already struggled with a shortage of planners, which was only amplified by the legislation, as cities worked to bring their policies and bylaws incompliance with the law, according to Business in Vancouver.
None of the cities spoke directly about a struggle to adequately staff planning departments, but three of the cities noted the funding allowed the city to access more staffing or consultants to do their work.
City of Burnaby spokesperson Cole Wagner said the HAF funding “enabled Burnaby to accelerate implementation of these initiatives, in part, through additional staffing and consultation support.” And City of Vancouver spokesperson Kirsten Langan said the city had “a long list of housing actions that we wanted to advance,” some of which were unfunded — a problem solved by the HAF funding.
The City of Surrey said the HAF funded “secondment and backfilling of 19 staff to lead this critical work — an unprecedented level of investment.” The city said the HAF funding “has been instrumental in fast-tracking” both new initiatives and planned initiatives.
“Without this support, some initiatives would have taken much longer, sometimes years longer, to commence,” the city’s emailed statement said.
The city went further in its statement to show how the funding has advanced some of the initiatives, including doubling the size of the team working to expand digital permitting and additional staffing to implement the professional reliance expansion.
CMHC and Fraser’s ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. No questions were sent to the City of Kelowna — while none of its initiatives were new, every initiative had a new component or some justification for HAF funding attached to it.
Necessary funding
Andy Yan, director of SFU’s City Program, told the Vancouver Sun the funding also supports infrastructure for producing more housing units.
“It’s what we have been saying for some time, that you need to put money toward staff and training or technology in order to have faster approval times,” Yan told the Sun.
And the $4-billion HAF does provide plenty of funding to each city. Vancouver received $115 million, Surrey got $95 million, Burnaby got $43 million, Richmond got $36 million, and Kelowna received $32 million.
That money is earmarked for a set of permitted uses, including investment in HAF initiatives, investments in affordable housing, investment in housing-related infrastructure and investments in community-related infrastructure that supports housing.
The City of Surrey said it is using HAF funding to build infrastructure in Clayton and Grandview “to unlock approximately 2,200 dwelling units within the timeframe of the HAF.” And the city said it will be acquiring two to three sites in 2026 and 2027 “for future affordable housing opportunities” and providing seed funding for a project owned by its for-profit development corporation.
However, when the federal government announced its deals with each city, it didn’t frame it as providing cities with the resources they need to do their work — it’s framed as the federal government incentivizing thousands of housing units and changing the conversation on housing.
And while the funding will likely ultimately help to build more units of housing, it’s not clear that the figures touted by the federal government can be credited to the program.