True Cost of Housing in the North

As part of the NAN Housing Strategy development, meetings and workshops have taken place with over 400 Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) community members at events in Thunder Bay and in eight community visits. A major challenge identified by many communities was the need for growth and long-term planning. In discussions with community leadership, housing managers and community members many identified long housing wait lists, the shortage of available building lots and the need for increased funding to meet the growing costs of house building. In particular, remoteness quotients, per capita funding formulas and maximum unit prices have all been identified as contributing to the housing emergency in NAN First Nations. It is also clear that current levels of need will only continue to grow unless these problems and underfunding are addressed immediately.

Two projects were developed in order to address these concerns: Immediate Housing and Infrastructure Needs and True Cost of Housing in the North. Both projects look to understand housing and infrastructure challenges by identifying the physical and financial gaps that exist on-reserve. 

Guided by curiosity, the project began by asking: 

What are the current housing and infrastructure needs on-reserve when considering overcrowding, quality and age of current housing? What are the full costs incurred for building an average 1200 sqft house on-reserve? And how do these costs compare to current funding models?

Who was involved?

Working in partnership with NAN Housing and Infrastructure, communities were engaged to collect information on current housing costs and needs. Additionally, a professional quantity surveyor was engaged to build on immediate needs findings and the initial true cost model to create a refined estimate of housing costs based on geographic factors, material quality, labour force and other variables. 

What was TDL’s role?

TDL supported the collection and analysis of data to estimate immediate housing and infrastructure needs. Additionally TDL provided support creating a model template for collecting and organizing construction costs and a survey tool to understand broader housing context faced by participating communities. 

What was learned?

The housing and infrastructure gap is significant and only growing.

Findings of the current model include: current and target average housing densities, replacement need of existing housing units, family characteristics, linear infrastructure estimates, water, wastewater and waste management upgrades and emergency housing units. Together, these variables provide a base estimate of housing and infrastructure need across NAN territory. In 2022, NAN Chiefs-in-Assembly endorsed an estimate of 7,588 houses and 89 kilometres of linear infrastructure are needed across NAN. Additionally, 1 in 4 water treatment systems, 1 in 2 wastewater treatment systems and 1 in 4 waste management systems are in need of replacement. In addition, a significant number of houses are approaching the end of their assumed useful life, the current pace of building is not keeping pace with the growing need and the housing crisis looks like it will only deepen. 

Federal and agency funding programs are not keeping pace with the full cost of construction.

Building on Immediate Needs estimates, a series of preliminary cost considerations and construction timeline has been developed taking into consideration resource and capacity constraints. Resolving the current housing and infrastructure could take up anywhere from 2 years to 27 years in some of the larger NAN communities. The study reaffirms the scale of the NAN housing emergency and need for long term, stable funding.  

Project Partners