Canada

This is the best summary I could come up with:

That fund is long overdue, affordable housing groups say, because the country is losing lower-cost rental properties – to renovictions, tenant turnover and demolitions – far faster than it can build them.

“It’s a lot more attractive to cut ribbons at new buildings,” said Terry Cooke, the chief executive officer of the Hamilton Community Foundation, one of the groups involved in the lobby effort.

“We already have 2,000 units in the pipeline,” said Katie Maslechko, chief executive of the fund, which received $500-million from the province and has already provided grants to help non-profits purchase three properties this winter.

fund must work quickly, Ms. Maslechko said: there are hundreds of apartment buildings in the province, with thousands of affordable rentals, at risk of being lost because non-profits don’t have the capital to move fast enough to purchase the properties.

Average rents have risen beyond what many low-income – and even moderate income – Canadians can afford, driven in part by real estate investing, gentrification and a surge in demand from a growing population.

“We’re so fixated on adding new supply that we’re blind to existing affordable housing that is lost right before our eyes,” said Brian Doucet, the Canada Research Chair in urban change and social inclusion at the University of Waterloo.

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