Affordable Housing Innovation Fund

Funding for innovative housing providers driving innovation across the housing continuum.

IMPORTANT
CMHC has received sufficient applications to fully commit the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund budget. The application portal is now closed.

What is the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund?

The Affordable Housing Innovation Fund supports new ideas that will drive change and disrupt the industry — ideas and approaches that will evolve the affordable housing sector and create the next generation of housing in Canada.

Funding Opportunities for Innovations

Develop and test innovations that incorporate resource and operating efficiencies and are replicable and scalable.
Get flexible financial support to test a range of innovations and leverage new partnerships.
Facilitate partnerships and encourage participation from diverse stakeholders.

Am I eligible?

Eligibility

The Innovation Fund is looking for unique ideas and approaches that will evolve and disrupt the affordable housing sector in Canada.

Eligible applicants include:

municipalities, provinces and territories
private sector developers and builders
non-profit housing providers and community housing organizations
Indigenous governments and organizations
any other housing provider interested in developing and testing innovative approaches to affordable housing

Innovation Fund proposals must demonstrate how they meet the following minimum criteria to be reviewed.

Affordability:

The Innovation Fund defines affordability based on the affordability criteria of the municipality where the project is located.
Failing such municipal criteria, the provincial criteria may be used. Where no affordability criteria exist, CMHC will determine affordability for rental housing projects based on the median market rent.
You must demonstrate how your project will remain affordable for at least 10 years.

Innovation:

The use of innovative solutions for affordable housing, including novel financing models or unique designs to overcome barriers and lower the costs and risks associated with housing projects.

For this program, we consider 3 types of innovation:

Transformational: Creates a new model that eliminates or totally transforms existing approaches.
Breakthrough: Meaningful change resulting in a demonstrably new approach that results in a substantial competitive edge.
Incremental: “New and improved” reflecting small, yet meaningful improvements in an existing approach.

Financial sustainability:

Your proposal must demonstrate that the required financial resources are available to support the sustainability of the project.
Proposals should also highlight how the innovation will reduce or eliminate reliance on government subsidies.

Knowledge transfer

As part of your application, you must provide a knowledge transfer plan and information dissemination strategy for your innovative project or idea.

Knowledge transfer objectives include:

capturing and sharing information, lessons learned and insights gained through the initiative
advancing the capabilities of the housing sector and the knowledge of decision makers
informing and influencing policy makers and builders
seeding the next generation of innovations to improve housing affordability

Additional objectives

You will also need to describe if and how your innovative proposal will support the following objectives:

reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions
increase the number of accessible units within the housing stock
address the needs of the National Housing Strategy in relation to priority areas for action

Proposals will be prioritized on these key elements:

innovation
affordability
financial sustainability
knowledge transfer
housing needs of priority populations
accessibility
partnerships promotion
scalability
replicability
reduction of energy use and green gas emissions
development, implementation and testing readiness

Note: To evaluate and prioritize your proposal, we need supporting documentation that shows how you meet each of the eligibility criteria. Download the required documentation checklist (PDF) for more details on how to complete your application.

Approval process

Learn more about funded projects

Overview of Current Affordable Housing Innovation Fund Projects
Project	Why was it Innovative	Level and Type of Innovation	Location
Housing Investment Corporation (HI-C)	HI-C is the first dedicated financial institution created by the affordable housing sector that uses private capital to finance the construction of affordable housing. Through a Credit Enhancement Facility, the Innovation Fund investment supported the credit worthiness of the proponent within the bond market	Transformational Financing Model	National
Fonds Accès Coop Proprio (FCAP) Confédération québécoise des coopératives d’habitation CQHC	Units are offered and managed under a co-operative tenure providing affordable housing while allowing members to earn equity. The innovation is focused on the fact that affordability will be maintained over time, to support intergenerational equity.	Incremental Financing Model	Quebec
Illu Tigguaralik Green-Plex	In partnership with the National Research Council, a series of advanced building technologies specific to northern climates were tested and implemented for the first time in residential buildings	Transformational Building Model	Nunavut
Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency (VAHA)	First movable modular project developed in Canada that demonstrated the technical viability of modular housing, but also tested new approaches to finance the construction of modular housing. This project is also responsible for greater understanding of the financing and viability of modular housing throughout the affordable housing sector.	Transformational Building Model	British Columbia
Whistler Housing Association Passive House	Using a prefabricated assembly system, Whistler Housing Authority demonstrated that housing built to achieve Passive House standards could be built at similar costs to code-built housing. At the time of this project, it was still widely believed that all passive housing was prohibitively expensive to construct.	Breakthrough Building Model	British Columbia
VanCity Community Foundation & Greater Vancouver Community Assistance Foundation	This project tested the market’s perception that the early construction stages were exceptionally risky by providing pre-development and pre-construction financing at low interest rates, typically the most difficult and expensive part of construction financing. Allows non-profit and social housing providers that would typically have to be subject to higher interest rates due to the perceived pre-development risks and limited track records or assets to be used as security.	Breakthrough Financing Model	National
United Church of Canada	The establishment of an organization by United Church of Canada (UCC) to develop its over 3,000-site real estate portfolio leveraging the innovative in scale, size, scope, and complexity. Notably, the use of a portfolio approach allowed the UCC to leverage idle assets for development of sites that were previously unconnected, developing both new and converting existing buildings to create affordable housing.	Transformational Financing Model	National
Kanas	While most building projects that are pursuing high levels of energy efficiency while minimizing energy use utilize higher insulation levels or improvements to the building envelope, Kanas focused on testing how green energy sources combined with storage could minimize reliance on traditional energy sources. Tenants were also provided real-time data to monitor, and possibly reduce or minimize, their energy consumption.	Incremental Building Model	Alberta
Alberta Rural Development Network	Creation of a framework which would leverage a portfolio of projects to achieve economies of scale to build net zero housing with shipping container housing at a similar cost as non-net zero housing units.	Breakthrough Building Model	Alberta and Ontario
Ken Soble Towers	The project sought to leverage new technologies and approaches to demonstrate cost savings associated with the retrofitting of high-rise multi units when compared to the new build of a multiunit passive building. Work focused on a high-rise building that was constructed in the 1940’s. Project has provided significant lessons learned for future retrofit projects that will move the industry forward in this ambition.	Breakthrough Building Model	Ontario
Toronto’s Modular Housing Pathway	Modelled off the VAHA model, the Toronto approach demonstrated scalability and a novel approach to delivering housing. Leveraging the ability of the city to quickly provide zoning, the city will move units to where homeless residents reside (e.g., tent cities) to provide rapid housing as opposed to dislocating individuals from the current support networks they have.	Incremental Building Model	Ontario
LogisNov	Development of cost-effective modular housing approach and design that would lower the cost and increasing scalability relative to conventional modular housing.	Incremental Building Model	Quebec
Capital Regional District CRD	Model brought together actors from all levels of government (Municipal, Provincial and Federal) along with housing sector proponents to facilitate and adopt a mixed-use approach to address homelessness. This approach helped to reduce the barriers typically found in developing affordable housing that often requires developers to seek multiple sources of funding and increases the risk of funding being pulled due to the timelines involved.	Incremental Financing Model	British Columbia
UTILE	The financial innovation was demonstrated by how UTILE took the capital to market and attract various investments sources The investments facilitated the creation of Fonds d’investissement pour le logement étudiant (FILE), which in turn created an investment fund that would guarantee the construction of affordable student housing in the city.	Breakthrough Financing Model	Quebec
SÉDAC	The project was innovative due to its use of on-reserve funds which did not require a Ministerial Loan Guarantee. Additionally, the program is expected to demonstrate that it is possible to leverage debt markets to finance on-reserve housing when it expands its portfolio to an adequate size that it can potentially issue a bond.	Incremental Financing Model	Quebec
Isthmus Capital Reconciliation Income Fund	Isthmus leverages the flexibility of the Innovation Fund via a revolving fund to facilitate the development of relationships that bridged private developers, investors, municipalities, and Indigenous groups to unlock the value of land parcels for the achievement of housing development. Its nuanced approach was able to overcome a long history of obstacles preventing such partnerships from being successful.	Breakthrough Financing Model	National
Homes for Heroes — Rapid Village	The project sought to show that changes in process and technology use could be leveraged to realize a very quick development cycle for rapid delivery. As an added benefit, project also leveraged research to incorporate therapeutic and mental-health oriented design features such as having units that are detached but within sight of each other in a closed fashion to provide independence, yet a simultaneous community feel.	Incremental Building Model	Alberta
Nisichawayasihk Cree Pewapun Construction	The project was able to demonstrate success in multiple unique building techniques with a northern focus including new approaches to reducing mould.	Incremental Building Model	Manitoba
Indwell — Passive House Development Portfolio	The use of a portfolio approach was innovative in scale and scope within the field of passive housing, allowing Indwell to leverage the scale of work to reduce costs associated with construction.	Incremental Building Model	Ontario
Windmill Dream ZIBI Master Community — District Energy System	This is the first post-industrial waste heat recovery system in North America and takes advantage of the heat energy of the water that would have otherwise been wasted. The project has fully redundant natural gas boilers for operational contingency. Tenants will be shielded against future increases in energy prices, providing for greater certainty of future housing costs.	Breakthrough Building Model	Ontario Quebec
CentreVenture Development	The project innovation comes from the application of material, design and process approaches needed to build the first high-rise construction of net zero in Canada, applying a Scandinavian-based building model to the Canadian context.	Breakthrough Building Model	Manitoba
FTQ	The project was innovative in how it brought together multiple partners (government, institutional, private for-profit) to create access to funding through the creation of a lending syndicate. It is expected that this project will further demonstrate the ability of varying partnerships to assist in development of affordable housing through making funding available for use by smaller and more focused non-profits and community housing sector providers.	Incremental Financial Model	Quebec

Here Are Some of the Projects That Have Been Funded

A Temporary Building Leaves a Lasting Impression

The City of Vancouver uses available sites to build modular affordable housing

The Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) Model

Demonstrating how financial institutions can foster and fund affordable rental housing

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Contact Us

Connect with your CMHC Housing Solutions Specialist at:
contactcentre@cmhc.ca or 1-800-668-2642.

If you are Indigenous or from a northern community, please connect with an
Indigenous and Northern Housing Solutions Specialist.

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Date Published: October 1, 2024

Affordable Housing Innovation Fund

What is the Affordable Housing Innovation Fund?

Funding Opportunities for Innovations