Canada’s long-awaited federal housing strategy will include a new national housing benefit, the Star has learned.

A housing benefit, or rent supplement for low-income tenants, has been high on the list of supports that housing advocates have pushed for to better ensure that all Canadians can find stable and safe places to live.

That benefit program could be in place in as early as two to three years, a source told the Star.

The National Housing Strategy will be unveiled in Toronto and Vancouver on Wednesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce details at a news conference in Lawrence Heights, the site of Toronto Community Housing’s largest redevelopment project, at 3 p.m. Federal minister of families, children and social development Jean-Yves Duclos will be making the announcement at the same time in Vancouver.

The strategy will provide a “much more concrete understanding” of how money allocated in the last budget will be spent on housing, a federal source told the Star’s Bruce Campion-Smith.

“Poverty reduction will be central to the entire thinking behind the national housing strategy,” the source said.

In March, the federal government announced $11.2 billion would be dedicated to affordable housing initiatives and programs to be spent over 11 years. Roughly $3 billion of that amount was set to be spent over the next five years.

As part of the process, the federal government reviewed submissions from 7,000 Canadians, through focus groups, surveys, reports and written opinions.

The National Housing Collaborative, a coalition of non-profit and private housing associations and charitable foundations, had included the need for a national benefit in a lengthy submission made as part of that process.

“If we are going to make progress against core housing needs and if we are going to reduce core poverty in Canada the introduction of a new housing benefit is essential to that task,” said co-chair Pedro Barata, vice-president of United Way Toronto and York Region.

Any potential benefit, the collaborative had stated, should include dedicated funding, a clear timeline for implementation and a call on the provincial and territorial governments to work together to develop a housing tool that can work for all Canadians.

Their submission also included the call for a federally led pan-Canadian initiative to end homelessness in 10 years, the creation of financial initiatives to boost the supply of market and non-market rental housing and a renewed commitment to improve and expand social housing.

While there have been few details, a significant block of money has been set aside specifically to help vulnerable people find and keep a home.

Duclos announced in April that the strategy would include a $5 billion National Housing Fund.

Among the people that money should help: seniors, people dealing with mental health or addiction issues, veterans, people fleeing domestic abuse or those living with disabilities. It could mean additional supports for people like James Ribble, a man who told the Star he would rather live on the streets than stay in a dank, run-down basement apartment he was connected to through the city. Ribble spoke openly about his issues with drugs and how his dismal living conditions made recovery more difficult.

The federal government has also made a $3 billion commitment to strengthen the relationship between provinces and territories and provide targeted funding for northern and Indigenous communities, both on and off reserve.

Nov. 22 is National Housing Day, an annual event created after the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee declared homelessness a national disaster in 1998.

Last year, on that day, the federal government released a summary report on what Canadians were hoping to see in the strategy. Key points identified included the need to boost affordable housing stock and improve the living conditions of vulnerable people, particularly Indigenous communities.

The $11.2 billion spending pledge made in March was coupled with a commitment to preserve baseline funding for expiring social housing agreements up to 2028.

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Greg Suttor, senior researcher at the Wellesley Institute, said the institute would be looking at how that baseline funding, about $1.4 billion per year, would be used.

The money, explained Suttor, is part of a social housing agreement made in 1999. The funding flows through the provinces, and then into public housing, non-profit housing and co-operative housing in municipalities across the country and is used, in part, for rent subsidy programs and to help with housing repairs.

“What happens with that baseline funding is terrifically important for the City of Toronto and Peel and York Region, and Durham, and Halton and so on,” said Suttor. “You need an ongoing subsidy flow and it shouldn’t just come from the city, it should come from senior levels of government.”

Part of that funding could be put towards a portable benefit, said Suttor.