Earlier this month, a northern company said there aren’t enough incentives for private developers to build affordable housing.
Cabin Radio looked into the supports currently offered and barriers private developers may face.
Afzal Suri, co-founder of Borealis Development Inc, told a committee of MLAs a lack of support from multiple levels of government meant his company’s project in downtown Yellowknife will not be 100-percent affordable housing, as he had originally envisioned.
Borealis plans to reopen the former Bellanca Building as The Nest, a 72-unit apartment complex with retail space, by the end of February 2025.
Afzal said once the project is complete, his company will determine how many of the apartment units it can afford to rent at affordable rather than market rates. (He said Borealis is also open to another company or organization taking over the building.)
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC, defines affordable housing as costing less than 30 percent of a household’s before-tax income.
According to the 2021 census, nearly 12 percent of households across the territory were spending more than 30 percent of their income on shelter costs that year.
A housing study completed for Yellowknife earlier this year found 10 percent of homeowners and 24 percent of renters in the city spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.
Housing NWT said its president had met with Borealis and provided a letter of support for the Bellanca project, but the company failed to secure the federal CMHC funding required for Housing NWT support.
When asked about the project, a spokesperson for the CMHC said the agency could not speak to specific applications for funding.
NWT and federal supports
Housing NWT said it does offer some incentives and supports for private developers interested in affordable housing projects.
Those include the Community Housing Support Initiative, which provides cost-share funding to support the development of affordable housing.
Housing NWT added it has previously partnered with the federal government and private sector through cost-sharing arrangements on projects such as Riverside Suites in Hay River.
Funding for that project included $13.2 million in loans from the federal government through the Affordable Housing Fund, $200,000 from Housing NWT, and investment and land equity from the Hay River Mobile Home Park.
Asked about affordable housing supports at the federal level, the CMHC spokesperson pointed to programs and initiatives under the National Housing Strategy, which they said are available to both private developers and non-profit housing organizations.
But there are some hurdles for private developers interested in accessing those supports.
Private-sector developers and builders may be eligible for the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund, but it is not accepting applications until further notice.
The Affordable Housing Fund – which, though similarly named, is not the same as the innovation fund – is open for applications but has some prerequisites.
To access it, organizations must have partnered with another organization or level of government and already secured some funding for new affordable housing, or the repair and renewal of existing affordable housing.
Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty told Cabin Radio Borealis had approached local non-governmental organizations about partnering to offer affordable housing, but did not secure any such partnership.
City releases new incentives
Alty said, in her experience, affordable housing relies on funding from the federal and territorial governments and does not often involve private companies.
“There is an opportunity where, instead of the federal or territorial [governments] or an NGO building and using capital for that, they could look at doing these long-term leases with the private market to provide affordable housing,” she said.
“It requires money to make sure that those rents remain affordable.”
While not targeted solely at affordable housing, the City of Yellowknife launched new development incentives this week to support several types of housing, land and revitalization initiatives.
The city recently received $8 million in federal housing funding that was designed, in part, to allow the creation of those kinds of incentives. (Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has criticized that fund as too bureaucratic and said he intends to scrap it if his party wins the next federal election.)
Several of Yellowknife’s newly announced measures come with affordable housing requirements for any developer that wants to take advantage of them.
An incentive designed to promote development of mixed-use buildings in the city’s downtown, for example – which offers five years of full tax abatement – requires that a building with at least 10 units dedicate 10 percent of those units as affordable housing.







