Push For More Housing in 2026

I have spoken about housing on many an occasion in this blog. For many years we have seen next to nothing built in multi-unit housing. It is only in the last several years that apartment housing has really accelerated in Winnipeg. However, there are numerous examples of housing being blocked and some developments take well over a decade to get approved. It isn't very timely and for the apartments that do get approved, it doesn't come close to meeting demand.

Winnipeg continues to grow despite whatever thoughts there are to the contrary. According to the latest statistics, Winnipeg is fifth in Canada in growing municipalities. In the last years it has meant tens of thousands of new people looking for places to live. The result has been a very low vacancy rate even as apartments come on stream. 

This isn't just a Winnipeg or a Manitoba thing. It has been happening all over Canada. Or it was. The federal government putting heavy restrictions on international students and has been having a dramatic impact on prices and housing availability in parts of the country. Apartments, condos and houses themselves are coming down in price and more capacity is being built. In markets like Toronto and Vancouver, it could have an effect on what is being built by the private sector.

As for Winnipeg, we haven't seen a real change in price or vacancy rate as yet. It is probably because we are barely recovering from the superheated economy when it comes to housing. The new and pre-owned housing market is still steady in Winnipeg. Meanwhile apartments that were approved and financing arranged for over time are now being built. 

One such apartment is being built on Pembina Highway on an old motel site that eventually fell on hard times. The Capri was one of many motels that lined Pembina Highway from the 1960s till recent years. It is the type of hotel that had no hallways where you pulled up and your door was directly into the room. Only a handful exist today. The Capri had several police related visits due to crime and fire and was demolished in recent years. Now, it will be 10 storey mixed used apartment building with an enclosed parkade. Altogether, it will be 240 units. 

Pembina Highway has very slowly gained height. It has for decades been lined with one and two storey commercial and retail units with some of the taller conglomerations dating back more than 40 years ago. Not surprisingly, they have been popular with people starting out on their own or downsizing as seniors. Some of the apartments have courted seniors and have services for them such as busy to take them shopping and to medical appointments.

As mentioned many times here, the Baby Boom generation will be increasingly downsizing from larger houses and many would like to stay close to their neighbourhoods. In several neighbourhoods this is impossible. I'm talking to you River Heights. Some places are strictly single family homes and even on commercial streets like Corydon, there are fights about anything over two floors.

There are several other taller apartments under construction up and down Pembina Highway from Jubilee to the Perimeter. It seems right after the pandemic, a whole bunch of projects were approved in the last three years. Some are strictly private while others have taken advantage of civic, provincial and federal programming supports. From 1993, the federal government exited the housing market aside from mortgage assistance and rules from CMHC. They gave transfers to the provinces who largely used money for other things including tax cuts. 

The 1990s were a tough time in Winnipeg. The recession dragged on and housing prices actually went down and nothing was being built. It really took till 2000 when prices began to climb out of the basement. The commitment to getting our house in order paid off because in the stock market crash of 2008, Manitoba was doing fairly well with deficits ending and housing prices up and building going up. It took a lot longer in the United States for recovery and even other parts of Canada. in 2009, Manitoba led the Canadian economy.

The problem is that the pent up demand was for detached housing and apartments that were one and two bedrooms at market rates which were not as affordable as older places in Wolseley, Osborne Village and elsewhere. More concerning was that older places and houses that had been affordable were falling apart and coming down to be replaced by units unaffordable. This includes the various hotels along Main Street used by people with low income. There is a direct correlation to their loss and to people living on the streets.

The federal accelerator fund administered by the municipalities faced cancellation if the Conservatives were elected in 2025. It was popular even with Conservative MPs and has now had two or three tranches of approved projects that are shovel ready. A few are in the Exchange District. The previous ones are in various stages of progress. The area around Waterfront Drive started around 1999 and now has 25 years going. It attests to fact that areas along the river can attract private investment although Waterfront has required various public support with a mix of old and new buildings as well as building a road that had been gravel right to the 1990s.

Prior to Waterfront though, building in the Exchange for housing was patchwork, Condos built at the Ashdown, co-op built a street over and undeclared housing used by artists scattered through the area. Even until the 1980s there was a significant garment sector in the warehouses. The first location of the Spaghetti Factory was in the Exchange from 1970 on. And now it will see housing built on its site with 114 units. It is unclear how many floors but the building at one time had four floors before fire reduced it to one.

The latest tranche of partially funded housing is 1000 plus units with 3/4 of them affordable or geared to income. Many are in the Exchange District in properties like the St. Charles Hotel that has had development drag on 20 years. The federal money seems to have helped a lot of projects get off the ground. In two years, nearly 10,000 units have been approved with many under construction. This is almost at the goal Winnipeg has set for itself.

It hasn't been easy getting projects off the ground. It will never be a case of one and done. Places like Vienna have made a commitment to building housing for over 100 years and it has helped keep the city affordable. We relied all to heavily on low inflation, low interest rates and a number of downturns in the economy to keep housing within reach. Even so, places like Toronto and B.C. got pricey.

There are some trying to make out in nostalgia that everything was so much better back in the Chretien days or the Harper days. The seeds of our hosing problems literally go back to the Mulroney days when all federal housing was sold off and federal money only went out as transfers. In the Chretien years transfers were cut and provincial housing dried up. In the 2000s housing was boosted under Martin and Harper as inflation and interest rates declined but no housing was built that was aimed at affordability. 

There has been 25 years of prices rises which has been good for home owners who bought low but is terrible for anyone getting in the market. Now, with prices going down, it is a buyers market. It will be important that the government not prop up the real estate market by cutting supply but it might be painful for some who bought high expecting it would only go up in value. In the end though, it is better for good Canada for a decline in prices that often went up month by month.

It is going to take a while yet to catch up with how many affordable houses disappear to demolition before new places go up. And because we have so many traumatized people from being on the streets, not working and using drugs, we are going to have to have support workers. More importantly, it is better to keep people in housing because once out, it is hard to find options for them if we keep going sideways.