Ottawa unveils $1.5B co-op housing plan

Federal program, first promised in 2022, aims to fund several thousand new units by 2028

- VICTORIA GIBSON

The federal government is opening the door to a long-awaited $1.5-billion program to fund co-operative housing projects countrywide, announcing that applications to build and expand co-ops will be accepted in a matter of weeks.

In Winnipeg on Thursday, federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser called the program the largest federal investment into new co-ops in three decades.

The program, which was first promised in 2022, aims to fund several thousand new co-op units by 2028, whether through entirely new developments or expansions of existing co-op sites, relying on $500 million in grants as well as $1 billion in lower-interest loans to do so.

“For more than the 30 years, the federal government — under both Conservative and Liberal governments I should add — withdrew completely from its role funding affordable housing including co-ops,” Fraser said in an interview just before the announcement.

“If you visit co-ops across Canada today, you’ll notice most of them are several decades old, and that’s not a coincidence.”