The Housing Supply Challenge, led by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), is an innovative competition that encourages residents, stakeholders and experts from across the country to propose creative solutions to housing. The goal: to help meet Canada’s pressing need for safe and affordable homes by breaking down barriers to the creation of new supply. The Challenge will distribute $300 million in funding over five years through various unique rounds.
We are excited to announce that Tapestry Community Capital has been accepted into Round 2 of the program, Getting Started, which seeks to find solutions to pre-development challenges.
CMHC received a total of 167 submissions that all demonstrated great potential impacts. Tapestry’s application is one of 29 that has been shortlisted and provided with incubation funding to further develop a concrete and implementable solution. Stage 2 of this round will make up to $38 million dollars available to successful applicants to implement their solutions.
Our solution seeks to solve two very complex challenges.
Non-profit affordable housing providers have a dire need for a flexible source of financing that can be designed on their terms, to meet their desired timelines. Simultaneously, there is a critical need for greater, and more meaningful participation of communities surrounding affordable housing developments. Affordable housing providers require innovative avenues for participation that will help to shift perceptions and build community support.
“There is immense pressure to fill the void in affordable housing stock and community-based organizations are urgently looking for solutions to fill their funding gaps and speed up the process of securing financing,” says Tapestry Co-Executive Director, Ryan Collins-Swartz. “At the same, we have seen that NIMBYism in these regions can slow development or even stop projects from getting off the ground. The result is that many housing projects never succeed, or are not scaled to their full potential, because of a lack of financing and community support.”
Community bonds allow organizations to set their own financing terms and raise funds on a predictable timeline. While unlocking private capital, they also build a powerful sense of community ownership. Residents, neighbours, and local businesses alike can all invest to improve their community, while earning a fair return.
Community bonds have been used to finance several affordable housing developments across Canada, including The Mount in Peterborough, Ontario and Brique par Brique in Montreal, Quebec. While affordable housing projects in Canada have raised a total of $3 million in community bonds to date, one single inclusive housing provider in the UK, Golden Lane Housing, has used this model to raise the equivalent of $26 million CAD. There is huge potential for non-profit housing providers to unlock capital on this scale to develop more affordable housing.
Building on our extensive experience of engaging communities to fund locally impactful projects, we seek to apply this knowledge to the affordable housing sector as a flexible and scalable source of financing. Our solution adapts our proven process for raising community bonds to meet the complex funding needs of affordable housing providers.
Be part of the solution
We will be designing this program through a highly collaborative process involving a diverse range of stakeholders that provide, fund, or are personally impacted by affordable housing.
As part of our discovery phase, we will be looking to speak to a multitude of stakeholders affected by affordable housing financing, including non-profit housing providers, financers and community members.
Please get in touch with us at info@tapestrycapital.ca if you or an organization you know might be interested in this consultation.
Learn more about our project, and the projects of other applicants, here.
*Please note the ’Financing affordable housing with the power of community’ project received Incubation Funding under the Housing Supply Challenge – Getting Started Round, however, the views expressed are the personal views of the author and CMHC accepts no responsibility for them.