Lissie from Housing
Download MP3We know our services and programs impact you, so let's talk about them. Together, we'll learn from the people behind the scenes and get to know our city a little better. From the City of Winnipeg, this is Our City, Our Podcast.
Natalie:This podcast is recorded in Treaty 1 territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Ininew, and Dakota peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in Treaty 3 territory.
Natalie:Hi Natalie, So housing, it's one of those things. It affects everyone, you know, whether you rent, you own, you're looking to find the perfect place. It can be a challenge, especially if you're trying to find something you can afford.
Tamara:And it's no surprise that housing is such a big topic of conversation in our city right now. It's also what we're talking about today here with our guest, Lissie Rappaport. She's our manager of the Housing Accelerator Fund. Hi, Lissie. For us to understand the current housing landscape, it helps to look back.
Tamara:How have the types of homes built decades, even more than a century ago, shaped our city today?
Lissie:So I think we can sort of look back at our city and see how different development patterns have happened over time. So the downtown is certainly one of the older parts of the city. About one hundred plus years ago, it started to be developed. And then there's neighborhoods that generally, I would say, surround the downtown that were developed next. And these were neighborhoods developed prior to the 1950s or so.
Lissie:These are what we call mature communities. And some of these neighborhoods are River Heights, Wolseley, St. John's, Dufferin in the North End. And you can see these neighborhoods typically have a grid street with sidewalks, connected, and they have a mix and diversity of housing types. So both single detached and more apartment buildings sort of what we would call something in the middle, triplexes, duplexes and apartment buildings mid block.
Lissie:And then the next phase was really let's say between the 1950s and up to the 1990s or 2000s neighborhoods that are more suburban with different curvy streets and these might be something like Lindenwood's neighborhood. And those were developed with really a lot of just single detached homes. Now we're seeing more of our new suburban neighborhoods that are developed let's say after the 2000s that are seeing more diversity and more apartment buildings being developed within them. But you can see sort of different phases And really what we want to see is more diversity of housing across our neighborhoods so people have different choices of where they can live.
Natalie:So if the majority of homes historically have been those single family ones, What other types of homes are we missing?
Lissie:Yeah. So if we think back to those neighborhoods that were developed around the 1950s, even '60s, '70s, '80s, we didn't see the diverse types of housing that our residents need. So, you know, in some of these older neighborhoods, you may have been a, you know, a couple with kids and living in a single detached home, and you've retired and you wanna downsize, but there's no, you know, apartments in your neighborhood if you wanna stay near your kids who live in the neighborhood. So different types of housing for different life stages. We need some more diversity related to that.
Lissie:So that's different sizes of houses, different affordability levels. So we certainly have parts of our city that are more economically segregated. So more affordable homes are typically in those older neighborhoods. Primarily, I would say, of the river and south of the river becomes more expensive. And so just having all that diversity in one neighborhood gives people choice if they want where they want to live.
Tamara:And as we look at adding more diversity to the neighborhoods, are you finding that there's stigma around certain types of housing as they kind of get introduced into those existing neighborhoods?
Lissie:Yeah, I think that there's probably stigma around certain types of housing, but I think what we see more is a resistance to neighborhood change. So somebody might be living in their home, in their neighborhood for many years, and they see a house being developed, you know, maybe into a duplex or a triplex or a couple homes being demolished for apartment buildings and they don't like the change. I think maybe there's some stigma around rental housing, but I think more so people just don't want to see the change. They've been living there, they've been used to something, and they're maybe fearful of what might come. And so that's where we see a lot of the resistance, I think, in neighborhoods.
Lissie:But this is also where we want to see, as I mentioned, more diversity of housing. So we need to see neighborhood change and new housing types being built in these neighborhoods, which we call infill housing. So when it's being built in an existing neighborhood, it's being built to something that wouldn't have been built in 1920, so it might look a little bit different. But it's addressing the needs of our residents today. And are you able
Tamara:to tell what the breakdown is for newer homes being built in terms of are they being rented out? Are they being livid in by the owners? What can we tell?
Lissie:Yeah. So I mean, across our whole city, about two thirds of the housing is owned by the homeowner and about one third rental maybe 75, 25. And I think that stayed relatively constant over the years. It's changing a little bit. But in terms of new housing that's being built over the last ten years or so, we're seeing a lot more new rental housing.
Lissie:And so that would be, you know, larger apartments downtown or along our corridors that are being built for rental. And that's great because, you know, prior to ten years ago, we didn't see an increase in rental housing. And that really is a big part of our housing diversity. Young people will live in an apartment for the first ten ish years of their adult life, newcomers, people on limited income, students, and some people live in rental apartments for their whole lives and that's fine too. And we were seeing a gap of that in our city and so it's really good to see new rental housing being built.
Tamara:You used the word corridors there. What are our city corridors? For our listeners, can you give some examples of them?
Lissie:So it's kind of the bigger major streets across our city. So Portage Avenue, Main Street, Osborne, Selkirk Avenue. And so there is a diversity of our corridors. Some are smaller like Selkirk Avenue in the North end versus Main Street. But in general, they're the larger streets and neighborhoods that we'll see often a mix of commercial and residential.
Natalie:So you've already touched on this a bit. But I want to dig in and be a little more explicit because it is a really fun topic. And it's how the built environment really affects people's lives. And this is such an important example. What does access to housing do for the overall health of our community?
Lissie:Well, I think we can I'll take a negative stance to that question as a starting point. We can see what lack of access to housing does for community health and for individuals' health. Like we've seen over the last five ish years, probably since the COVID-nineteen pandemic, homelessness has become more visible in our city. And homelessness is a direct result of lack of available, affordable, and suitable housing. There's certainly elements of mental health that tie into that, but at its core, it's a lack of housing.
Lissie:And so we can see that in our communities. We've seen growing encampments across our city and for people that live nearby an encampment, sometimes they're very peaceful areas, and sometimes they're not. People are struggling in those areas. So we can see how that affects our community and our neighborhoods. For the individuals that are living in homelessness, they're struggling the most.
Lissie:You know, they're at most of risk for violence and health and life expectancies, you know, twenty years younger for someone living on the street than someone living in a home. So we can see that in our city and we've seen how that has changed over the last number of years. In in contrast, you know, a healthy neighborhood with lots of diversity of housing has a mix of people, of ages, of young kids, older kids, teenagers, older adults, living together. And that's really what makes a healthy neighborhood and supports our businesses of various types, restaurants, all kinds of things you might hope for in a neighborhood.
Tamara:And you mentioned different ages in a neighborhood benefits it. And we're seeing a lot more people wanting to age in place, so living in their homes as independently as possible and for as long as they're able to. How does that play into the discussion that cities are having around housing, including here in Winnipeg?
Lissie:Yeah. Well, older people are one of the populations in Winnipeg and I think probably across the country that are in some of the greatest need of housing. And so the federal government uses a term called core housing need to define people who are in housing need. And so that's where they can't afford their home. It's inadequate because it needs you know major repairs and fix ups or it's unsuitable for their family size.
Lissie:So essentially there's overcrowding not enough bedrooms for the number of people. And older adults across our city are one of the groups in highest need of core housing need. And so that's showing that there's not a lot of options available to seniors to move into. So if they want to downsize their home, maybe they're living mortgage free, they bought their home fifty years ago, and they can't afford to rent now. And so being able to create more options for those individuals is really critical.
Natalie:There are some terms used when talking about housing that sound really similar, so this a good chance to kind of clarify some things. Affordable housing, deeply affordable housing, supportive housing. What makes each of those things different?
Lissie:That is a very tough question and it depends who you ask. But at the city, we try to sort of mimic definitions that are used by the federal and provincial governments because we follow their funding and policy direction as it relates to housing. So at its core, housing is affordable to someone if they can spend 30% of their income on their housing costs. And so then they have 70% of their income to spend on everything else they need. The deepest level of affordable housing is really rent geared to income.
Lissie:So the rent is then tied to the income that that person makes. And so they're never going to pay more than 30% of their income on rent. And that's also what we might call social housing or public housing. It's housing that's owned by the province of Manitoba or a nonprofit. And rents are maintained at that level of affordability with operating funding coming from the province or the federal government.
Lissie:But we also are seeing affordable housing needs for people in the more middle income bracket, would call. And so that's where we're we're supporting rental housing that's just below market rate. And so that might be, you know, maybe a thousand dollars for a one bedroom across Winnipeg where the market is renting that at, let's say 1,200 or $1,300. So it's just a little bit affordable and the city is playing a role in in being able to support some of those projects because they don't require the ongoing operating funding that the province needs to provide for rent geared to income. And then there's other terms like supportive housing or transitional housing that refer more to the supports that are available to the people living in those buildings.
Lissie:So they are likely deeply affordable in that they're paying rent geared to their income, but then there's varying levels of people working in the building whether they're there twenty four hours a day or maybe just visiting checking in on people living there for a couple hours a day, varying levels.
Tamara:These are all things that you've recently taken a very close look at as part of our 2025 housing needs assessment. And we'll include a link to it in our show notes. What is that document? And why is it really important to the work that you're doing?
Lissie:Yeah. So the 2025 housing needs assessment is the second housing needs assessment that we've done as a city. The last one was released in 2020. And so they both give a snapshot of housing in Winnipeg today. The twenty twenty five one that we just released was guided by an advisory group that included people who are working with people in housing need and people with lived experience of different housing needs, whether it's homelessness or living in social housing.
Lissie:And it really just helps us as city staff and really the city public understand what's really happening behind the scenes as it relates to housing needs. So, you know, this this report gave us a lot of information that we probably, you know, knew most of, but we now have the evidence to really understand the issue. And so I mentioned earlier this term core housing need. And so in the 2025 housing needs assessment, we we look at who are the populations most in core housing need. And by far, the number one group is single mother headed households.
Lissie:And that was actually pretty surprising for me to see. And that's true across Canada, actually except in the province of Quebec. And it likely has reasons to do with access to childcare. But that's the group in Winnipeg that is in greatest housing need. As well as older households, so people over the age of 80 and just kind of around there.
Lissie:Younger households, so people under the age of 25, and so that might be people leaving their parents' house, going to university, getting their first job, can't afford a place to live. And then also newcomer families and indigenous families. So those are the groups that are really in the biggest need in our city.
Natalie:This is a question maybe about kind of civics 101. What level of government does what? This is a relatively new thing for the city of Winnipeg to have documents like what you've shared here. Why the recent focus?
Lissie:I think it's happening certainly across the country where the housing needs are growing. The civic government or local government is really the most connected on the ground. And so we're really the first to see these changes in our community. Affordable housing or social housing is predominantly still the role of the provinces. But what we see in terms effects of housing, you know, we mentioned homelessness and we're certainly the first to respond with first responders and a homelessness team.
Lissie:The city is also the level of government that's responsible for approving new housing. And so how we make our rules of what can be built where really affects what type of housing we're seeing. And so our team, our housing team at the city is really focused on the Housing Accelerator Fund, but really we are addressing housing across the continuum. So both what new market housing can be built where and making it easier to build more housing, but then also providing some supports to that more affordable nonprofit led housing. And we really try to focus across that.
Lissie:We also work really collaboratively with the province of Manitoba and the federal government to make sure we're each doing what is within our role, but doing it together and in tandem. And that's really critical.
Tamara:What are some of those things that we are as a city doing behind the scenes to support housing projects in ways that residents might not realize?
Lissie:So we've done a lot of new programs over the last couple of years with Federal Housing Accelerator Fund Money, where we've been able to put $69,000,000 worth of grants out there to help groups build affordable housing. And that's supporting over 2,500 new units of affordable housing. And so, you know, we mentioned these terms affordable that includes projects that include just the below market affordable for middle income people, but also the deeply affordable where we're partnering with the province to provide that support. So we have a very productive grant program that's supporting a lot of new affordable housing units. We have an affordable housing concierge role and that's new.
Lissie:We started this in 2024. And so that's one staff that works directly with nonprofit and indigenous organizations and private organizations who are building affordable housing and helps them navigate city approval processes. So, you know, for a nonprofit who wants to build housing to address the needs of their community, they might be very experienced in, you know, running a domestic violence shelter, but have no idea how to build a building. And so while they have a consultant team that they're working with, this is a role that the city can be a partner with those groups and an open door. They can call our concierge up anytime, ask questions, and we'll get the answers.
Lissie:We'll direct them to who they need to talk to and really help also expedite those projects so we get this new housing built faster. So that's been a really exciting and successful program that we've been running and has really let us build more affordable housing faster and work directly with nonprofits. And demystify a bit of
Tamara:the city too at the same time.
Lissie:Yeah, and so a lot of nonprofits, they sort of, yeah, the city is a bit of a maybe black box. You call 311 and you try to get directed somewhere. But as it relates to housing development, there's a lot of intricacies that we need to think through. And so we have position a position now that's really focused on working with those groups.
Natalie:And and for people listening, check out the show notes if if you're looking to to get in touch with that that concierge. Lissie, a question for you. You know, talking to engineers in the city, I often hear LEGO was a foundational piece of bringing them to their work. And I'm so interested how you got here.
Lissie:Like
Natalie:like a SimCity.
Lissie:Yeah. Oh, I was gonna say SimCity. I or the one before that, RollerCoaster Tycoon. Oh, yes. Certainly remember playing that on my computer.
Lissie:But yeah, I mean, I think I'm a city planner by training, and city planners work in a similar field as architects and engineers and sort of thinking about space. But what's really interesting to me about city planning, it's not just sort of the physical space or the physical science that engineering might be. It's also the incorporation of the social, environmental, and how all these factors play into it. So it's not just about how big the road should be. It's about, is there enough trees on the road, is it in the right position related to the housing nearby, and sort of really just looking at things through a more complex interrelated lens.
Lissie:And so I think I'm very excited by these complex issues. And housing is certainly an extremely complex issue that there's not one solution for. And I worked in nonprofit community development field for over ten years before I joined the city in this role. So I come from a more sort of social work background, and now I bring that with my city planning degree. This position really does a little bit of all of that.
Tamara:What does a successful day look like for you in this role?
Lissie:Going home at 04:30, get my kids. Yeah, we do a lot of, you know, I mentioned our concierge, we do a lot of work directly with nonprofits. My role, I'm certainly talking to all of our counselors and the mayor and elected officials, other levels of government, and it's really just about trying to coordinate all of our efforts. With the Housing Accelerator Fund, we're on a very tight timeframe to try and hit a certain number of new housing units to be built in Winnipeg. And so we're moving very quickly and we're doing things differently across the city.
Lissie:And so a lot of my day is troubleshooting, problem solving, working across departments, across government, nonprofit, private, working and talking to everyone.
Natalie:I think a lot of folks around the dinner table are often saying, What's the future hold? And you are in this really unique position to kind of gaze into that future. What is your hope from what you can see for the future of housing in Winnipeg?
Lissie:Well, think we've done a lot of really good work over the last couple of years as a city government, but also in partnership, as I mentioned, with the province and the federal government. And I really hope this is something that we continue to do because we can only you know, we've we've we've spent decades to get to this issue where we're at in our city as it relates to housing. It's gonna take more than a few years to sort of build ourselves out of it. And I think we're at a really special time where we have alignment across all levels of government to address this issue, and I really hope that continues. And so in the last few years, we've seen the number of new affordable housing units being built go up pretty significantly.
Lissie:So about five years ago, saw about 3% of our new housing a year that was affordable. Last year, saw 15%. And so if we can keep that up, we are going to get in front of this issue of housing affordability in our city. We're gonna see healthy neighborhoods. We're gonna see people moving out of of homelessness into housing.
Lissie:And that's, you know, on an individual level, that's life changing for those people. And think if we continue at this pace, we're going to actually see some real change. And I really hope that we do.
Natalie:Is there an experience or an image that might come to mind for you?
Lissie:Yeah. I think of so I've mentioned the the housing needs assessment, which is a lot of numbers and sort of telling these these stories of the big data, let's say. And so to me, was really shocking to see the number of single mother headed households as the greatest population in core housing need. By a long shot, the number of single mother headed households that are in need of housing in our city is huge. Almost 30% of single mother led households are in core housing need.
Lissie:And reading that stat, it was at the same time that I had young kids myself, my first kid. And that was just a really shocking experience to think about if I had to raise my kid without a stable home, without a stable partner, and what that experience would have been like. You know, new motherhood is is a challenging time to say the least. And if you put on top of that the lack of secure and safe housing, I can't imagine what what hundreds of thousands of mothers are dealing with in our city. And so that's really the story that I think about and sort of why I do this work.
Lissie:Because it's not just the numbers. It's as I mentioned individual people who get access to a home like that's life changing for them and for generations for their kids and their kids kids and and I think we're starting to see and make a difference but there's still much much work to be done.
Tamara:Lissie, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm sure a lot of listeners are going be kind of paying attention to when they see those construction projects pop up around the city. But before you go, we do have one last question, and it's one that we ask everyone. We hope it's an easy one. What do you like about Winnipeg?
Tamara:What do you want to share with our listeners as somebody who has a very unique vantage point to this city? Doesn't it have be work related?
Lissie:It's Okay if it is. Yeah, I think, I mean, Winnipeg is unique. We don't have always the best reputation across Canada or even the world. But some of the things I spoke about even sort of the age of our city. We're an older city.
Lissie:We have a lot of older neighborhoods and and old heritage buildings. We think about our Exchange District, And we have a really nice balance between that and livability, let's say. So I live in one of our older neighborhoods in the city, which which I love to have that, you know, heritage houses everywhere you look, but, you know, walkable neighborhood, big streets, just, you know, a five minute bus ride from downtown. So I think, yeah, the the neighborhoods that we have here and a mix of old and new within those is really, I think, what makes Winnipeg special.
Natalie:Thank you so much for all of this. Thank you.
Lissie:Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Tamara:Before we go, we want to send a big congratulations to our friends at the Time to Read podcast. That's done by the Winnipeg Public Library. This month, they're marking their one hundredth episode. So if you're looking for a podcast book club, check out Time to Read on all podcasting platforms. Congratulations over there.
Natalie:And coming up next month, I kinda like to get into the weeds on things, and this one is gonna be great. And very colorful. And, you know, affects us all. We're talking about traffic signals. That's right.
Tamara:Red light, green light, stop, go. That's what we're talking about next month.
Natalie:We better stop now. But before we do, if ever you want to send us an email or make a suggestion of things to talk about, drop us a line. We're over at citypodcastwhittipeg. Ca. Talk to you soon.
