The Infrastructure for Housing Initiative aims to address constraints which are limiting new housing construction, by enabling municipalities and Indigenous communities to build infrastructure ahead of population growth. Investments will be within CIB’s existing priority sectors.
Eligible projects are expected to be primarily last-mile and net-new large-scale enabling infrastructure, which includes:
- water: water, wastewater, stormwater, conveyance
- transportation: roads, bridges and the accompanying civil work
- transit: electric buses, light-rail transit, stations and terminals
- clean power: district energy, electricity distribution, storage
The CIB’s lending product also helps municipalities and Indigenous communities by sharing in risks related to the timing of community growth, linking repayments to the number of housing units expected to increase as housing growth materializes. This allows them to go faster and build bigger today in anticipation of future growth.
The initiative is committed to four main benefits:
- unlock net new, incremental housing that would not be possible without enabling infrastructure
- municipalities can build infrastructure in advance of growth, reducing required future rate and tax increases
- gives access to credit and lower rates for smaller municipalities, without access to capital markets or a provincial borrowing program
- wholly-owned municipal subsidiary corporations take financing off-balance sheets
IHI will work alongside existing federal supports for housing as part of the broader federal approach to address the housing shortage.