Ottawa, Ontario - Every Canadian deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. Yet for too many hard-working Canadians, especially for young people, it feels like an impossibility. There aren’t enough houses for people to buy, or apartments for people to rent. That makes finding a good place to live too expensive – beyond what many people can afford. The measures in Budget 2019 will help to increase the supply of housing, and help more middle class families find an affordable home today through new, targeted support for first-time home buyers.
Minister Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and Canadian Coast Guard, was in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia to highlight Budget 2019, Investing in the Middle Class. The Budget details how the Government is making sure middle class Canadians benefit from Canada’s economic growth. That includes helping more Canadians find an affordable home, prepare for well-paid jobs, retire with confidence and afford prescription drugs when they need them.
Speaking at an event with the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors, Minister Wilkinson discussed how the Government of Canada is building on the National Housing Strategy by investing to increase supply in the housing and rental markets, and implementing plans to make homeownership more affordable so more middle class families can realize their dream of owning a home.
Through Budget 2019, the Government proposes to:
- Make homeownership more affordable by introducing the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive, a $1.25 billion shared equity mortgage program that is expected to help approximately 100,000 first-time home buyers over the next three years reduce their monthly payments required to own a home.
- Provide first-time home buyers with greater access to their Registered Retirement Savings Plan savings in order to buy a home by increasing the Home Buyers’ Plan withdrawal limit from $25,000 to $35,000.
- Help boost supply in Canada’s rental market by making an additional $10 billion over nine years in financing available through the Rental Construction Financing Initiative, which will help build a total of 42,500 new units across Canada. This investment will focus on areas of low rental supply such as Vancouver and Toronto.
- Launch a new Housing Supply Challenge to encourage innovative solutions that would break down barriers limiting new housing, and work with other levels of government on long-term housing supply opportunities.
- Increase fairness in Canada’s real estate markets by taking action to improve the Government’s compliance and enforcement framework for anti-money laundering and taxation.
With these investments, the Government is working to increase access to housing that is affordable, and to help middle class Canadians realize their dream of owning a home.
Source : Government Of Canada