Canada's 5 Largest Residential REITs Defend Record on Affordable Housing

Five of Canada’s largest publicly traded residential REITs have banded together to form ForAffordable.ca. an initiative that will promote viable ways to generate more affordable housing supply where it is needed in Canada.

The new initiative, formed late last month, includes Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (CAPREIT), Boardwalk REIT, Killam Apartment REIT, InterRent REIT and Minto Apartment REIT.

“Canada is experiencing the worst crisis of housing affordability and supply in a generation. Put simply, there just haven’t been enough new homes built to match the country’s population growth,” said Mark Kenney, CEO of CAPREIT, in a statement.

According to REIT a primary driver of the lack of affordable housing—and an overall housing shortage that drove up home and rental prices to record levels last year—has been a surge in immigration to Canada.

According to the group, one way to promote the development of affordable housing is to adopt what the group calls the “sound public policy” of prohibiting rent controls, noting that the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan—which for decades have not invoked any rent controls—are the regions where the most affordable rents are found in Canada.

They’re also full of wide open spaces, lots of moose and hockey players named Messier who grew up shooting slap shots on frozen ponds in Moose Jaw, unlike Greater Toronto and Vancouver, where housing prices are the most expensive—growing population centers that are magnets for immigrants.

The group said it also want to clear up what it calls “misperceptions” about how REITs and other housing owners and operators do their business.

ForAffordable.ca provides facts and figures pertaining to how large housing providers operate, where and how they invest in their buildings, and how they are taxed compared to other asset classes.

The outlet also notes that REITs do not undertake “renovictions,” a practice similar to building-wide renovations that can be used in cities like New York to remove rent controls on apartment units.

The group also wants everyone to know that half of the estimated 120,000 rental units they own or operate are rented that meet the government’s definition of affordable–less than 30 % of local median renter household income.

The initiative also notes that rents across their collective portfolios have only grown an average of 2 % per year over the last 10 years.