Canada's government unveils plan to build housing on federal lands

Government of Canada office building. (JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock)

Another major method to quell Canada’s housing affordability and supply crisis has been introduced by the federal government.

Announced over the weekend, federal Minister of Housing Sean Fraser and Federal Minister of Public Services and Procurement Jean-Yves Duclos announced this past weekend the federal government’s new strategy to open up the use of select federal lands for potential affordable housing developments.

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These properties are deemed to be surplus and/or under-utilized lands in the federal government’s vast portfolio.

This all falls under the new “Public Lands for Homes Plan” strategy, which aims to build 250,000 new homes on federal properties by 2031.

Furthermore, the 2024 federal budget provides $500 million to launch the new Public Lands Acquisition Fund, which will buy land from other levels of government to enable the federal government to acquire more land for housing and help build middle-class homes.

To help expedite this process, they have created the “Canada Public Land Bank,” which is a new interactive online tool that identifies federal properties that are suitable for residential uses through redevelopment.

The 56 properties listed to date have a combined total land area of about 750 acres, which is equivalent to 75% the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, nearly four times the size of the Calgary Stampede grounds, or 82% the size of the Toronto Islands. Currently, these properties have the capacity to achieve thousands of new homes across the country.

This also includes identifying five federal properties that are immediately available for new housing developments, which will be leased. These properties are ready for builders to submit their plans.

The list of properties in the Canada Public Land Bank will be regularly updated. This website also allows for consultation, including from Indigenous people and organizations, non-profit organizations, builders, and other partners and housing providers.

The intention is to prioritize long-term property lease deals at a highly nominal value and not perform a sale of these properties to ensure the lands remain publicly owned and affordable housing. The federal government will partner with local communities and organizations to achieve these projects.

With land acquisition costs kept out of the pro formas, it is anticipated that this will improve the affordability of these homes.

“A large focus of the path forward is going to be not just on announcing a national fire sale where we get rid of publicly owned properties to the highest bidder, who will build whatever kinds of homes they can manage, but instead a long-term lease of up to 99 years for as little as $1 in exchange for a commitment from billers that they’re going to make homes available [for] prices that low-income families can afford and the middle-class families can afford,” said Fraser during a press conference on Sunday.

Fraser adds that there are thousands of federal properties across Canada that “aren’t doing much right now” and could be made available for housing development.

He suggested these federal properties could be military bases, armouries, post offices, office buildings, or other lands.

Over the past decade, the federal government has notably already undertaken such a process within Vancouver by having federal Crown corporation Canada Lands Company partner with local First Nations to redevelop the 21-acre Heather Lands (former BC RCMP headquarters) and the 90-acre Jericho Lands (former military base) into new homes for tens of thousands of people.

“One of the important reasons for which we are opening up the federal government by showing the type of surplus land inventory that we’ve got is to expedite the process,” Duclos added.

“So by connecting to municipalities, municipal leaders, to communities, to not-for-profit housing providers, to builders, to local communities, we know we can do better in terms of timeline than working in a closed-door environment that’s been done for the last three decades. So by changing the way in which we build partnerships, we believe that the input of local communities will be incredibly more important and valuable to the federal government.”

However, some critics of the federal Liberal government have been quick to point out that this strategy resembles a variation of the federal Conservative party’s proposed strategy of listing 15% of the federal government’s 37,000 buildings and all appropriate federal land for new housing.

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