N.B. housing assistance program expanded to include people who live alone

New Brunswickers who live alone are now eligible for a rental assistance program.

The Canada-New Brunswick Housing Benefit was originally available to families earning a combined income between $14,200 and $38,000 per year before tax. In December 2021, it was expanded to include people with children under 19 years of age who rent and make between $12,500 and $50,000.

According to a release from the Department of Social Development on Wednesday, the latest expansion means about 10,000 more New Brunswickers will now be eligible for the benefit, which ranges from $300 to $475 per month.

Social Development Minister Dorothy Shephard stated in the release that the program's expansion ensures people won't need to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table.

Julia Woodhall-Melnik, a Canada Research Chair in Resilient Communities and associate professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, said the latest change is a step in the right direction.

But she said the benefit leaves out a lot of people on the waitlist for affordable housing who are not working, which is one of the eligibility requirements of the program.

"So a lot of them are living with disabilities or are retired or receive social assistance," said Woodhall-Melnik. "The proportion of individuals who we've sampled from the waitlist who are working is actually smaller than those who aren't."

The benefit, which will cost about $98.3 million over the next seven years, is evenly split between the federal and provincial governments.

Robert Duguay, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Development, told CBC News in an email that all applications that meet the criteria will be accepted until the benefit is fully committed. He said the benefit hasn't run out yet.

He said the program has the capacity to help more people, so expanding the eligibility, will "allow us to maximize the impact of this program."

The program is on a first-come, first-served basis, wrote Duguay.

According to the release, 1,255 households had been approved for the program as of Jan. 31, benefiting around 4,400 people.

It said the benefit is delivered directly to the household and not the housing unit or landlord. People approved for the benefit will receive help for three years, according to a previous announcement, and the benefit will go with them if they move somewhere else in the province.

Not a replacement for the rent cap

Woodhall-Melnik said three years for a short-term benefit is "fairly substantial" but she said it ignores the fact that there are social, structural, physical and health barriers that people experience when it comes to receiving income.

"Are folks going to get significant income increases in three years? Probably not," she said. "Is our housing market going to be less constrained and more affordable in three years? I really, really hope so. But probably not. So my question is, what is there at the end of this?"

She said she is working on a research study that tracks mental health and other outcomes for people who move into affordable housing or for people receiving the benefit. She hopes in the coming months, there will be more available information on how the benefit helped families.

Woodhall-Melnik said she would like to see the government make "extremely meaningful investments" in affordable, accessible housing. She said this could include starting a publicly-funded construction crew to build public assets.

Woodhall-Melnik said the expansion of the benefit isn't a replacement for the rent cap — which expired at the end of 2022 — because it doesn't protect a large portion of the over 8,000 households on the affordable housing wait list.

"It's, again, that very punitive approach to social welfare that we've seen for years and years that sort of reinforces this belief that if we're not contributing economically to society, then we're not, you know, worth support or worth affordable good housing."