13,000 households remain on waitlist for public housing: N.B. housing corporation

Thousands of people are on a waitlist for housing in New Brunswick.

The CEO of New Brunswick Housing Corporation says there are over 13,000 households waiting for public housing, and more than half have been waiting for over two years.

François Boutot told a legislative committee that the corporation is working on building and finding people housing, but numbers show only a handful of units have been built so far this year.

At the end of 2024, there were 4,630 units. As of Tuesday, Boutot said the corporation looks after 4,648 units.

“That will vary on a regular basis…if we talk again next week, that number will change again,” he said. “We announce units on a weekly basis.”

He said there’s been 152 new units built since the N.B. Housing Corporation was established in March of 2023.

There are another 110 units in progress.

“We have 12 active construction sites on the go right now,” he said.

The corporation is responsible for building and maintaining safe, affordable and accessible housing units for low-income New Brunswickers.

The goal is to help 18,000 families by 2029, Boutot told the legislative committee.

He said in spring 2023, the vacancy rate was about six per cent. Today, it’s around four per cent.

“We won’t be at zero, because we always have turnover, we always have some water damage or whatever so there’s always a per cent in there that will have a vacancy rate due to renovations, due to turnover and when we do have turnover, we want to makes sure that tenant has the best quality unit available,” Boutot told reporters after committee.

In June, N.B.’s Auditor General Paul Martin revealed that public housing units in the province lack systems and practices to ensure they’re well-maintained, safe and habitable for tenants on a timely basis.

In his report, Martin said unit inspections by the N.B. Housing Corporation weren’t being monitored as required, nor were they being done consistently.

His investigation found 3,045 work orders were issued for pests and bed bugs, but 53 per cent weren’t meeting maintenance timeline targets. Of those 3,045 work orders, 53 cases took between 366 and 1,068 days to resolve.

On Tuesday, Boutot said there are 14 inspectors working for N.B. Housing, and the corporation has been given the green light to hire six more.

Of the 13,000 households on the waitlist, almost 4,000 identified as a family – but Boutot wasn’t able to provide how many children are included on the list.

He said 13 per cent of the units have had higher radon levels than Health Canada recommendations. Most of those units have already seen renovations to lower those levels, while the remainder will be fixed in the coming months.

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