Exploring Tax Relief Programs: A Path for Rental Housing in Canada

To date, Canada’s housing policies have been attuned to a housing system in which most Canadian households obtain their housing from the private market. A small portion of households live in non-market social housing, including public housing, nonprofit housing and non-profit co-operatives. This has resulted in a system that relies on market mechanisms to deliver housing, and therefore housing policies which primarily focus on home ownership, leaving renting households lagging behind in housing security. The federal government’s National Housing Strategy (NHS) provides limited progress to alleviate stress on low-income rental housing, and this research paper seeks to propose policy and tax tools to improve the progress on objectives of the NHS. Specifically, this research explores using tax relief programs to reposition NHS initiatives to provide housing with meaningful measures of affordability, and housing directed to low-income earners.