Ottawa housing advocates have a new, troubling data point to wrestle with: a CBC investigation has found that roughly a third of Quebec's social housing units are in a state of disrepair, even as governments at every level continue to pour billions of dollars into building new affordable units.
The finding is raising hard questions about whether Canada's affordable housing strategy has a blind spot — one that could affect communities from Montreal to Ottawa and beyond.
New Builds, Neglected Stock
The political appeal of new affordable housing is easy to understand. Ribbon cuttings generate headlines. Funding announcements come with press conferences. But the unglamorous work of maintaining the units that already exist? That's where the money tends to dry up.
The Quebec report makes the gap concrete: renovation budgets haven't kept pace with inflation. The cost of construction materials, skilled labour, and building maintenance has climbed sharply in recent years — but the allocations to keep existing social housing in good repair simply haven't followed. Deferred maintenance compounds quickly. A leaky roof ignored for a season can become structural damage within a few years. Aging heating systems, outdated electrical, crumbling exteriors — these aren't cosmetic problems. They directly affect residents' health, safety, and dignity.
Ottawa's Aging Housing Inventory
Ottawa isn't insulated from these pressures. Much of the city's social and community housing stock was built in the 1970s and 1980s, meaning a large portion of it is now 40 to 50 years old. Ottawa Community Housing (OCH), one of Canada's largest municipal housing providers, manages more than 15,000 homes across the city. Maintaining that portfolio — not just building new units, but keeping existing ones livable — requires sustained, inflation-adjusted investment year after year.
Local housing advocates have long argued that operating budgets, particularly for repairs and maintenance, fall short of what's actually needed. The Quebec findings put a sharper point on an argument Ottawa's housing sector has been making for years.
The Policy Tension
At the heart of this issue is a familiar tension in housing policy: new supply is visible and politically rewarding, while maintenance is invisible and underfunded. Announcing a new 200-unit affordable development is a win for any politician. Announcing $40 million to fix aging boilers and crumbling stairwells is not.
Advocates are calling on governments to treat the upkeep of existing social housing as a funding priority equal to new construction. That means maintenance budgets indexed to inflation, dedicated repair funds built into housing agreements, and accountability mechanisms to ensure the state of the existing stock doesn't quietly worsen while new units go up across town.
What Ottawa Should Be Asking
For Ottawa residents living in social housing — and for the advocates, service providers, and city councillors who represent them — the Quebec report is a useful prompt. If one in three units in Quebec is in disrepair, the reasonable follow-up question is: what does Ottawa's own inventory look like?
With federal and provincial housing dollars flowing at an unprecedented rate, now is exactly the moment to ensure that investment reaches the people already in the system — not just those waiting for something new to be built.
Source: CBC Ottawa / CBC News
