The CLT Files Podcast

7 Things to Know about The Federal Acquisition Fund Announcement (Canadian Rental Protection Fund)

In April 2024, the federal government announced a new fund to protect existing affordable units across Canada, providing $1 billion in loans and $470 million in contributions to non-profit organizations and other partners to acquire eligible properties.

The Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts (CNCLT) sat down with Josh Barndt (Executive Director of the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust), Thom Armstrong (Chief Executive Officer of the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC), Mike Bulthuis (Executive Director of the Ottawa Community Land Trust) and Shekara Grant (founder of the Weymouth Falls Community Land Trust and Program Manager at the Community Housing Transformation Centre), to discuss what the announcement might mean for our sector.

Here are 7 take-aways from that conversation:

It’s a huge step forward.

The federal government has far more resources than other levels of government. Therefore, it is imperative that they be at the table to help protect affordable units through acquisition funding. Federal acquisition funding is a recognition that acquisition of at-risk affordable units must be part of any effective housing strategy.

“We’ve seen so little attention to the preservation of existing supply, naturally occurring affordable housing. The federal announcement is a recognition that there’s work we can do together. It’s a big jump into the space.” Mike Bulthuis

It’s not enough.

We don’t yet know how the financing is meant to work, but if you split the contribution component across five years, it works out to approximately $94 million a year across Canada.

“Using a pretty conservative assumption [about the] per-door allocation from the [2024-25] grant portion, it’s enough to buy one 25-unit building somewhere in Canada. One.” Thom Armstrong

We need it faster.

Both BC’s Rental Protection Fund and the City of Toronto’s Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program provide proof of concept. These programs have over-delivered and have demonstrated that acquisition is the fastest and most economic way of providing housing affordability. The consequences of not moving quickly on a federal acquisition fund are unconscionable in a housing crisis as wide and deep as ours.

“[Acquisition] can be a life-or-death intervention on behalf of our communities. The work we’re doing is emergency work; we’re emergency workers at the computer, with our spreadsheets. This crisis is an extreme, critical emergency.” Josh Barndt

One size does not fit all.

An acquisition fund will need to be adapted for rural Black and Indigenous communities where a racist lack of government investment means that there aren’t even buildings to acquire and the most urgent need is basic infrastructure. The fund could cover land acquisition, without pre-existing improvements, for example.

Funding should flow locally.

Part of the success of the acquisition program in BC has been the trust the government placed in the community housing sector to administer and deliver funding. In Toronto, federal acquisition funds could be added to the existing Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition (MURA) program to strengthen municipal support. Similar solutions exist in Nova Scotia, Quebec and in other provinces. The more locally this program can be administered, the better and faster the results.

Acquisition can be supply in disguise.

Improvements, redevelopment and new builds on acquired land mean that acquisition programs are also supply programs that increase the number of homes in the non-market sector (a key marker where Canada lags behind other countries).

Collaboration is key to successful advocacy.

Advocacy for a federal acquisition program was a long-term effort. Through localized organizing and proof of concept, the issue bubbled up provincially before being taken up by the larger housing associations. The housing sector needs to organize itself in order to be a trusted partner of the federal government. We must continue to collaborate to ensure that acquisition remains part of the housing strategy of any and all governments.

“The challenge is that our governments don’t necessarily speak to one another, so it has become the burden of non-profits to organize ourselves in order to organize our governments.” Shekara Grant

9 Takeaways on Community

On June 19, 2024, the CNCLT sat down with Anita Prasad, board member of the PNLT, Curtis Wiley of the Upper Hammonds Plains CLT and Chiyi Tam, managing director of the TCLT, to talk about community.

Here are some takeaways from that conversation. We invite you to listen to the podcast for more details.

1. Each CLT will need to define its community: this is an exercise in boundary-setting and mutual responsibility.

Defining your community is about defining your project; your boundaries might be as geographical as values-based.

“If you want to be able to vote and have our decision-making, our leadership, our staff follow, be accountable to you, that’s not a one way street.” Chiyi Tam, TCLT

2. Relationship to place is a key axis for defining community, but not a simple one.

Displacement is the theft of relationship to place: our grassroots CLTs have to grapple with historic and ongoing displacement, as well as belonging, which means membership might go beyond simply living or working in a geographical location.

“I did not understand how complex it would be. And how brave our community members would have to be to have these conversations because they unearth so many deep personal conflicting feelings about belonging.” Curtis Wiley, UHPCLT

“We can’t say no to the guy who drove for 3 hours every week his entire life to try and get to a Chinatown to buy groceries. That guy never lived or worked within the boundaries geographically of Chinatown, but there’s no way we can say to that person that they don’t have enough emotional investment to have decision making power over our organization.” Chiyi Tam, TCLT

3. Shared values, and shared stories, are also key axes for defining community.

Grassroots CLTs define their values; these emerge from shared stories and histories. But communities are also flexible and permeable, giving space to new members.

“One of the essences of community is a shared identity or a shared story, which is why Parkdale as a community and as a neighborhood will always be this site of both resistance and welcome. We mourn the people that leave because in a real community, individual members are not replaceable. But is the community mandate resonant enough? And are the borders permeable enough that even new people entering the community, that may not have a historical relationship to the community, can find a solid place within that space as new people entering?” Anita Prasad, PNLT

4. “Community-led” means engaging the community in all aspects of the CLT project.

It’s not enough to focus the power of community on the board of directors. Community members need to be engaged in the everyday work of the CLT.

“Really successful organizing as I understand it and as I live it, requires cultivation of leaders from the community that are leading the change. That natural leadership, that resilience, that adaptability, that ingenuity, creativity, and that connectedness, already exists in the community.” Anita Prasad, PNLT

5. Provide food, hope, and concrete tasks to engage your community.

A meeting without food is a meeting; a meeting with food is a gathering! Structured tasks can be surprisingly well received. Hope emerges from collective action.

“The first activity of the land trust was to do a rezoning practice, which we weren’t planning on doing. But that really galvanized us. The fact that we could pull this lever and actually make a change, set us on a path forward to know that that’s possible for us, and start to use that collective action, to continue to do things together.” Curtis Wiley, UHPCLT

6. Friction and conflict can be generative and are indicators of the depth and strength of community.

Conflict is inevitable and managing it is an important task. Defining the difference between conflict that is generative and not can be helpful for members and for the organization. Nevertheless, Interpersonal conflicts can be a sign of previous work and a marker of community.

“Friction to a certain degree is critical to keep a neighbourhood anchored in place […] That was a really good indicator that we had reached community, that we had reached people that had enough significant history of trying to do things in this neighbourhood, that they had built up beef with each other.” Chiyi Tam, TCLT

7. A CLT that successfully houses people might find their ideals about community tested.

Funding agreements may require a shift in a CLT’s definition of community. For example, the City of Toronto may demand tenants be taken from a centralThe difficult realities of housing people can challenge ideals.

“A lot of people with so many complex stories of displacement and of trauma, including refugees, have found home in Parkdale. Psychiatric survivors have found home in Parkdale where they couldn’t find that anywhere else […] What happens when you try to house all of these complex folks with different needs in one building?

And how does an organization that was formed maybe on a slightly idealistic notion that a community has space for everybody […] How do we work with some people being so vulnerable and having so much trauma and lived experience that they may not be suitable for our buildings because of how precarious they make the housing for others in the building? Those are intractable questions that we haven’t actually found any clean answers to or any answers that or any solutions that feel good.” Anita Prasad, PNLT

8. Understanding your community can be a pathway to acquisition.

Communities have organized themselves collectively for generations. Finding your place within those structures can be an important element in forming your CLT. Reach out to the elders in your community.

“I’m just using a tool that I feel like I understand to forward work that’s been being done by people in my community for generations.” Curtis Wiley, UHPCLT

“Clan associations have been stewarding their properties with a private nonprofit structure without any awareness or need to use the word community land trust, on their own for over a 100 years so long as Chinatowns have needed to exist due to racist immigration acts. What does that mean for us in terms of how to focus our community priorities on what kind of acquisition we should make? And that really positions us interestingly as a succession plan.” Chiyi Tam, TCLT

9. The C is CLT makes them so much more than housing organizations.

CLTs can be a way to re-think our relationship to land, to the economy and to each other.

“The really cool radical thing that is only available through a community land trust is this question of, can we return the land to being land as opposed to property? Can we come back into a reciprocal relationship with it? Can we care for it in a way that’s climate just? Can we care for it in a way that’s socially just?” Chiyi Tam, TCLT

“For all of our CLTs it’s really about empowering people, and changing the narrative, that these things don’t have to happen to us, we can actually be the ones manipulating our environment and being able to have autonomy over what happens there.” Curtis Wiley, UHPCLT