The federal government is scrapping a planned National Indigenous Housing Centre to help manage billions in housing funding and will instead reroute the cash through the new Build Canada Homes or Indigenous governments.
The announcement was made in a Friday news release that marked the latest evolution in the six-year process of establishing a national strategy for Indigenous housing.
Creating the Urban, Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy was an action item assigned to the federal housing minister by then-prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2021.
Budget 2022 committed $300 million toward that work, then Budget 2023 brought the sum to $4 billion over seven years to implement the strategy.
On Friday, Ottawa said that rather than create a National Indigenous Housing Centre as an Indigenous-led means of managing some of that cash – as had been the plan since 2023 – the money will now be split three ways.
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$1.7 billion will go to Build Canada Homes, the Mark Carney government’s new affordable housing agency, “to support Indigenous housing providers serving urban, rural and northern areas.”
Just under $2 billion will go to Indigenous groups and governments, including $1.2 billion in existing agreements and what Ottawa called a $780-million “top-up.”
“Finally, up to $300 million will continue to be made available through Indigenous Services Canada to address urgent housing needs in urban, rural and northern communities, ensuring projects in the current pipeline can move forward,” the news release stated.
Ottawa described this as an updated and “rebalanced” approach that would provide clearer guidance for housing providers. There was no suggestion that the overall funding available or timelines had been meaningfully altered.
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Friday’s news release was accompanied by an event in Behchokǫ̀ involving two federal ministers, but did not include specific new commitments to housing in the NWT.
A spokesperson for federal housing minister Gregor Robertson, who was in Behchokǫ̀ on Friday alongside NWT MP and Crown-Indigenous relations minister Rebecca Alty, said the two were there as Behchokǫ̀ is an example of a “northern community facing acute housing needs.”
“Today’s site is a prime example of a community that will benefit from this important partnership with the federal government,” the spokesperson stated by email.
