NDP offers tax credits to boost rentals

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government will spend more than $176.5 million over the next five years through a new incentive program to build rental housing.

“This is how we’re going to make Manitoba more affordable — more affordable for you, more affordable for your kids and grandkids, more affordable for people in all walks of life,” Premier Wab Kinew said Thursday as he announced the rental housing construction incentive at a new seniors residence in the Sage Creek suburb.

The province is offering refundable tax credits of $8,500 per new rental unit, with an additional $5,000 available for affordable units, to private and non-profit developers to build new rental units, including affordable housing.

“When we look at what’s going on in other parts of the country, we can’t let what happened in Vancouver — the housing prices and the rents — happen here in Manitoba,” Kinew said.

“In order for us to stay ahead, we have to keep building more rental units,” the premier said, flanked by area MLAs and Housing Minister Bernadette Smith.

“People are struggling to find housing they can afford,” Smith said.

“Young people, seniors and families are being priced out of their communities … We’re stepping up to jump-start rental housing construction by giving builders a direct incentive to build more homes that people can actually afford.”

There’s room for input from non-profits, private developers, municipalities and First Nations, the minister said.

Projects must include a four-unit minimum to qualify. Affordable units must meet rent thresholds set by the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corp. and be occupied by households with incomes below provincial limits. The current limit is $67,900 for households without children and $90,500 for households with children or dependents.

Projects must continue to qualify as rental housing for 10 years. During that time, the number of units must not fall below the number for which a tax credit was received, a government news release said.

The Progressive Conservatives said the NDP government is giving and taking away incentives to build.

“Anytime when we see more housing come to the province is a good thing,” PC housing critic Jeff Bereza (Portage la Prairie) said Thursday.

But while the government announced incentives to build rental units, it also expected legislation to pass Thursday that Bereza said would disincentivize builders. Bill 12, the Housing and Renewal Corporation Amendment Act, prohibits an owner of a building that receives 15 per cent or more of construction funding from the corporation to provide social housing from selling or demolishing the building or using it for a different purpose without the Housing and Renewal Corporation’s consent.

» Winnipeg Free Press

“With Bill 12, all of these people that might be building houses in the province are going to have to be in partnership with the government forever because of Bill 12. It says if there’s a 15 per cent ownership by the Province of Manitoba, that they cannot sell any of these properties,” Bereza told reporters. “I don’t know a lot of businesses, for a minor state like 15 per cent, that would want to be in business forever with this government.”

» Winnipeg Free Press