Waiting for a new home since 2017

In Savanna Huard’s downtown apartment, privacy is tough to find.

She lives in a three-bedroom suite in a Manitoba Housing building on Kennedy Street with her four children, husband and pug Hazel. The family outgrew the space years ago, but they’re stuck on a Manitoba Housing wait-list that numbers in the thousands.

“There is never any personal space, so we’re all kind of divided and tensions get really high,” Huard said. “It’s really hard.”

The province provided updated figures Thursday that show Manitoba Housing’s wait-list has 7,436 names. That’s up from 7,011 in May, and 6,079 in the spring of 2024.

The Free Press has reported that more people are waiting for housing placements than at any point since 2020, when 9,000 people were on the list.

Since October 2023, the province has added 51 social housing units; another 581 units are slated for development, while 278 of those are currently under construction, the province said.

Huard said she applied to transfer to a larger Manitoba Housing unit around 2017, about one year after her youngest child was born and she realized the family needed more space.

She envisioned a home or townhouse with four bedrooms, and a yard where Hazel and the kids could play. Instead, she has remained in the cramped apartment. One child sleeps in a closet that’s been converted into a bedroom and another sleeps in an open area near the kitchen.

At one point, she curtained off a section to add a bit of privacy, but later took the material down because it was a fire hazard.

The downtown neighbourhood has problems with addictions, crime and homelessness.

“It’s not great. There’s a lot of drug use so there are needles everywhere and there are constantly people yelling outside and trying to get in,” Huard said.

“(Manitoba Housing) is just telling me nothing is available.”

A spokesperson for Housing Minister Bernadette Smith said the government is committed to increasing the housing stock, noting all provinces face similar challenges.

“The former Tory government sold off housing and cut maintenance budgets, while the NDP is focused on doing the opposite,” the spokesperson said.

“It took seconds to sell, and it takes years to build.”

In a separate statement, the province said the Manitoba Housing wait-list includes people such as Huard, who live in social housing units and have requested a transfer. Each person is contacted twice a year to confirm whether they are still interested in moving, and asked to provide updates about their circumstance.

Applicants are allowed to select their preferred locations, but that can significantly affect how long they wait. Some areas have long delays, while others, such as certain rural communities, may have immediate availability, the province said.

“It’s really quite as simple as there is not enough supply to meet the need that is most pressing in our city,” said Shauna MacKinnon, a professor at the University of Winnipeg department of urban and inner-city studies.

“You’ll get the response from policy makers that it takes a long time (to build housing), and it does take a long time — but we’ve been saying this for years and so we have to act now and we have to act more quickly.”

MacKinnon, who is involved in the Right to Housing Coalition, said Manitoba cannot rely on the private sector to provide a suitable stock of affordable housing.

As the province builds new social housing units, it should continue to look for existing properties that can be purchased or repaired and added to the housing stock.

Christina Maes Nino, executive director of the Manitoba Non-Profit Housing Association, urged governments to introduce stable funding streams to develop social housing. Those must include long-term financial commitments that remain unchanged beyond election cycles, she said.

“Every time funding pauses or changes, we lose years of affordable housing development,” she said. “In countries where they’ve done very good work on social housing development, they have 30-year predictable funding programs,” she said.

MacKinnon agreed.

“It’s easy for politicians to blame it on the previous government, so this is what we end up with. We’ve been playing this game for a very long time, and it’s really to all of our detriment.”

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca