Chrystia Freeland touts ‘affordable’ 330-square-foot units for $1,600

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Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland toured a new building on Monday offering micro-apartments starting at $1,600 per month that she said was illustrative of the homes that her government is getting built for “low and middle income Canadians.”

“This is an apartment building that has 227 apartments for low and middle income Canadians and it was built thanks to our Apartment Construction Loan Program,” said Freeland in a video shot at the site of Hudson House, a new 23-storey rental high-rise in Victoria, B.C.

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In a backgrounder, Freeland’s office cited the building as “a prime example of how the federal government is building more homes for everyone, including families, younger Canadians, and persons with disabilities.”

What the deputy prime minister did not mention is that Hudson House will be renting its 227 units at rates considered high even by the wildly inflated standards of Coastal B.C.

Two-bedroom units at Hudson House start at about $3,300 per month. The lowest priced one-bedroom unit is advertised at $2,410 per month.

The absolute lowest priced Hudson House unit being advertised is their A2 Studio Apartment, a micro-unit of just 330 square feet — about the size of two parking spots. The A2 starts at $1,680 per month.

Even with Victoria at the sharp end of some of the most inflated rents in Canadian history, units at Hudson House have asking rents that are higher than average.

According to the most recent report by Rentals.ca, the average asking rent for a Victoria two-bedroom is $2,743, with one-bedrooms averaging $2,116.

And all of these figures are well beyond the rents paid by the average Victorian. Since most Victoria renters are locked in at lower rates, according to CMHC the average rent paid in the city is $1,516 per month.

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For an existing Victoria renter to get even a micro-unit at Hudson House, therefore, they would need to pay a per-month premium of $160.

Freeland came to Hudson House because its builders benefited from a $100 million loan from the Apartment Construction Loan Program. Touted as one of the key planks of the Trudeau government’s pledge to build “more homes, faster,” the program offers low-cost loans to builders who meet certain benchmarks for energy efficiency and affordability.

Freeland referred to Hudson House as an affordable rental project because it does technically meet the affordability requirements for the Apartment Construction Loan Program.

To qualify as an “affordable” unit, Hudson House needs needs only to ensure that 20 per cent of its units have rents that are less than 30 per cent of the median total income for the area.

As of 2021, the median total income for Victoria-area families is $111,390. So, any unit that costs less than a third of that — $33,417 per year — is considered “affordable” by the federal government.

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“We are building more rental homes in Victoria — and all across the country — to unlock pathways to the middle class and build a brighter future for every Canadian, including the next generation,” Freeland said in an official statement accompanying her official Hudson House visit.

And, like all Trudeau government housing announcements these days, Hudson House represents an infinitesimal contribution to a housing shortage that is being utterly swamped by record-high immigration.

In just a three-month period last year, Canada added 430,635 new people — easily placing Canada among the top five fastest-growing countries on Earth. That’s an average of 5,000 newcomers per day.

This means that even if every single Hudson House unit ends up housing a family of five, it will account for just five hours’ worth of new immigration.

Freeland’s visit to Hudson House also included an aside in which she seemed to hint at B.C. being superior to her home region of the Prairies.

“How lucky you are to live in this amazing city — wow,” Freeland told the assembled Victoria press corps, before referring to a line from the Margaret Laurence novel The Diviners that “for Prairie people the real-life version of dying and going to heaven is to move to B.C.”

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