Manitoba housing benefit stops taking new applications as minister points finger at Ottawa

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 07, 2025 1:11 PM EST | Last Updated: 7 minutes ago

A national programme that supports thousands of Manitobans who are astatine hazard of homelessness has stopped taking caller applications, and the province's lodging curate says Ottawa is to blame.

The Canada-Manitoba lodging benefit, which provided rent top-ups of up to $422 a period to astir 4,500 individuals and families arsenic of Tuesday, has stopped taking caller applications arsenic of Wednesday, the state says.

The programme depends astir wholly connected national funding, which the state says has been exhausted.

Those already receiving the benefit or who program to renew their applications will proceed to get it, Manitoba Housing Minister Bernadette Smith told reporters connected Wednesday.

"We're not washing our hands of it. We person an statement until 2028, truthful whoever is presently successful the programme volition proceed to get their benefits," she said.

Manitoba's provincially led rent supplements, including Manitoba's rent assistance program, were not affected and proceed to enactment caller applicants. The state volition effort to link those who hoped to use for the national payment to those different programs, Smith said.

But Codi Guenther, enforcement manager of New Journey Housing, a lodging assets centre for newcomers successful Winnipeg, said that does small to assistance the radical her enactment supports, arsenic rent assistance is constricted to Canadian citizens and imperishable residents.

"That leaves retired a batch of people," she said.

Some radical who were hoping to use for the benefit but didn't marque the deadline will present hold successful exigency shelters longer oregon extremity up paying higher rent than they had planned, Guenther said.

"We've spent the week talking to our clients that were successful that position. and they are precise frustrated. They're truly not definite what's going to beryllium adjacent for them," she said.

"We are the ones that are telling them look to look that this assistance nary longer exists, and that's truly hard to do, to beryllium sharing this atrocious quality with clients."

The nonaccomplishment of the lodging payment volition besides marque her team's enactment much difficult, she said.

"It's going to beryllium precise hard to find those backstage landlords that are consenting to rent to these folks," she said.

"They don't privation to o.k. idiosyncratic if they don't person capable wealth to screen the rent."

CBC News has reached retired to national Housing Minister Nate Erskine-Smith's bureau for comment.