‘We’re not going to be solving the housing crisis anytime soon’

More than one in 10 people in Winnipeg are living in unaffordable, unsuitable or unsafe housing, according to new data that will be presented to city council next week.

The 2025 Housing Needs Assessment, which tracks and projects future housing needs in Winnipeg, reported 2,459 people experiencing homelessness in the city last year — the most since the first assessment in 2020. As well, 34,425 households, or 11 per cent of the population, are considered in “core housing need.”

To fill those gaps, there would need to be more than 20,000 rent-geared-to-income apartments and at least 12,541 “affordable” — rented at below-market rates — housing units built over 10 years, the report says.

“I read the report, and I get the realistic view that, unfortunately, we’re not going to be solving the housing crisis anytime soon,” said Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood), who chairs city council’s standing policy committee on property and development.

“I think that as we grow as a city, and as people’s needs change, it could potentially get worse before it gets better.”

The report notes particular demand for rental housing and affordable starter homes, while the city’s supply of single-detached homes is aging. Meanwhile, older adults are keeping their homes longer, creating more of a need for aging-in-place supports.

More multi-unit and rental housing is being built to meet Winnipeg’s quickly growing population rate, largely owing to immigration from other countries. Larger families are struggling to find rental housing, and even as the number of rental units has grown, three-bedroom or larger units are particularly hard to find.

The number of secondary suites —separate living spaces in homes, often rented out — has skyrocketed in Winnipeg by 700 per cent in the last five years, from 100 in 2020 to 800 this year.

Housing in Winnipeg is getting more expensive overall, more older homes are in need of major repairs and while, the demand for social housing is high, Manitoba has the highest social housing vacancy rate in Canada.

That’s likely, the report notes, because many of those units need repairs.

Over the last five years, the city has been able to make a positive dent in housing insecurity, largely due to the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, said Yutaka Dirks with the Right to Housing Coalition.

While housing is largely seen as a provincial and federal file, recent developments — such as proposed plans to build an apartment complex on the Granite Curling Club parking lot requiring collaboration between the club and the City of Winnipeg to move forward — prove the city has a role to play, said Dirks.

“There needs to be some boldness and some willingness to stand behind those decisions, to say, in fact, these decisions, we, the city, has a role to play in making sure that all the residents of the city have access to housing that they can afford across the city,” he said.

The report finds some groups experience greater housing need than others, including low-income households, renters, young people, single mothers, newcomers and Indigenous Winnipeggers.

Winnipeg’s population has grown by over nine per cent in just three years, the report says, more than double the annual rate of growth in the last 10 years.

Brokenhead First Nation Chief Gordon Bluesky said Winnipeg’s rapidly growing population has impacted access to housing for Indigenous Manitobans.

“When you start to look at the amount of immigration that’s happening in Manitoba, in Canada in general, historically, our First Nations people were already at the bottom of the housing crisis,” he said.

“All that new influx to Canada has now put a further strain on our First Nation housing crisis, and that’s not just in community, but external, obviously, here in Winnipeg. It’s created a challenge for us that we have to be a be a part of that solution.”

The property and development committee will receive the report Thursday.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca