The following is a column from Premier Tim Houston:
One way to tackle the cost of living is to make owning a home and renting more affordable.
That’s why our plan focuses on supporting renters while creating the conditions that encourage more construction. It will increase the number of new homes, the number of new affordable units and reduce red tape.
A key element of our plan is making it easier to build – we don’t want red tape and bureaucracy driving up the price of home ownership. Because of our government’s work, homes will be on the market earlier than usual.
We are seeing early results. In the last year, housing starts grew by 25 per cent. By the time our plan is finished, we will have fostered an environment where more people want to build up, based on our housing plan’s focus on bringing 40,000 more homes to the province – 17,000 of them affordable units.
We also know that the government must increase the availability of affordable housing. We can do this by building public housing and by working with the private sector to ensure we are building more affordable homes.
After years of inaction on affordable housing, we are making historic investments to help those families who need it most. By working with our partners, our affordable housing plan will create over 17,000 affordable units in Nova Scotia. Our plan will also create enough public housing units for 700 people – the single largest investment in public housing in 30 years.
To reduce pressure on the rental market, we invested in student housing. We are building seven new residences across Nova Scotia. These residences mean over 600 students will have on-campus homes – freeing up apartments for others who need them. By increasing the supply of student housing, we can reduce demand for apartments throughout our communities.
It is also important that we support renters in this market. To do this, we extended the Province’s rent cap and helped offset the cost of renting for over 9,500 households by providing rent supplements.
We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars and cutting many miles of red tape to help tackle the housing challenge. We know there is more work to do, but our plan is producing results for Nova Scotians. The momentum is continuing to build as more of our communities grow and more units come online.
We won’t stop until the work is done.
Tim Houston
Premier of Nova Scotia
