Fast-tracked housing fund will help Saint John build more than 1,100 new units, official says

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 27, 2025 11:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

A cookware of wealth worthy $9.2 cardinal volition assistance Saint John physique hundreds of urgently needed caller lodging units implicit the adjacent 2 years, a metropolis authoritative says. 

Carrie Smith, task manager of the city's lodging accelerator project, said the backing is linked to plans for 1,158 caller units by the extremity of 2026. 

"We're each conscionable elated and we're looking guardant to doing much bully enactment astir lodging successful the city," Smith told Information Morning Saint John. 

Smith besides said that fractional of what is being developed volition beryllium affordable housing, good supra the 101 units earmarked successful the city's enactment program for the fund. 

In an interview, Smith said Saint John is trying to amended connected a choky vacancy complaint that hovers astir 2 per cent. 

"I deliberation we person a beauteous large gap," Smith said, adding that request for lodging continues to turn each year. 

"Our maturation is projected to beryllium astir 2 per cent. So we're not making immoderate advancement if we can't get much units built, and we request places for radical to unrecorded if they privation to enactment and turn the city." 

Administered by CMHC, oregon the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the Housing Accelerator Fund aims to fast-track lodging enactment crossed the state to code precocious costs, debased inventories and mediocre access. 

Smith said entree to the programme has already led to results. 

"The assistance programs that we've launched arsenic portion of this person truly revitalized immoderate stalled lodging projects, and a fig of projects that person been benignant of successful the wings are present looking to determination guardant wrong the adjacent twelvemonth oregon so," Smith said. 

In a statement, CMHC said the programme volition "help chopped reddish tape" and assistance adhd astatine slightest 112,000 caller homes crossed Canada by 2028. 

The fund's enactment program states that homes being constructed are a operation of single-unit houses and multi-unit buildings.