Ana Bailão vs. the Housing Crisis

Mark Carney has a favourite verb, and it is “build.” Who can blame him? With our ex-best trading partner in the midst of an existential crisis of continental proportions—and a housing crisis of our own that won’t quit—now’s a good time to make sure every patriotic Canadian can actually afford to keep living within our borders. (No matter how optional those borders seem in Trump’s mind.)

To make that affordability a reality, last fall, the Carney government invested an initial $13 billion in a new federal agency: Build Canada Homes, or BCH. Its sole purpose is to open the floodgates on affordable, non-market housing using a combo of public lands, red tape–free development deals with cities and, ideally, truckloads of homegrown timber. Will it be enough to bust through the country’s horrific building slump? Well before BCH’s 100th day in business, skeptics—even the parliamentary budget officer—were saying probably not.

Ana Bailão, the agency’s first CEO, respectfully disagrees. Bailão is a NIMBY’s worst nightmare. As a former city councillor and deputy mayor of Toronto, the country’s second-most-expensive city for renters, she’s spent her career trying to drive down housing costs by squeezing units into towers, backyards and laneways. Her challenge is that Canada needs them everywhere. Yesterday.

Build Canada Homes isn’t the federal government’s first foray into housing agencies—the first was during the Second World War. As someone who’s been working on the housing file for a long time, what about this new initiative seemed like a good idea to you?

A few things. One was the recognition that, to build out the transitional and deeply affordable piece of the housing continuum (which the market doesn’t provide), the government needs to step in. The average household income within Toronto Community Housing, for example, is $19,000. The market is never going to produce housing for a family at that income level.

As CEO of BCH, what’s your role in all this?

Attract the best talent and create a culture of innovation and the urgency that this issue requires. I basically have one goal, which is shovels in the ground.

Do you bring your own shovel?

I have pink construction boots.

Signing bonus?

Actually, a former executive director of the Housing Secretariat gave them to me for my first groundbreaking when I was with the city of Toronto. Maybe my second.

Let’s talk money for a minute. If BCH’s job is to provide more affordable housing, can you quantify “affordable” for me?

We’re using an income-based definition: “affordable” means that shelter costs 30 per cent of a household’s median income or less.

As a millennial, I’m drooling.

That figure is our goal. For people in the “very low” income bracket, for example, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom across the country would be $377. For those at a moderate income, it’d be around $1,100. A salary in Toronto is different from a salary in Winnipeg, so we use census data to respond to local needs. We’re not being guided by the market; we’re being guided by the realities of the people.

So there is math.

Yes, there is math.

Related: How To Fix Canada’s Housing Crisis

When Mark Carney delivered his now-famous hyper-nationalistic speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he raved about Canada’s vast reserves of critical minerals, our educated population and our talent, and called us “a pluralistic society that works.” What he didn’t mention—for obvious reasons—is that this country can’t seem to reliably, affordably house its people.

I came from Portugal to Canada with my parents when I was 15. I’ve always looked at this country as one of opportunity.

Your parents were renters when they first arrived, correct?

For the first two years, yes. Originally, their objective was to come to Canada, make some money, then move back. They liked it here so much that they brought my sister and me over. Back in 1991, around the time we arrived, there was a big conversation in Portugal about how to get rid of slums; Lisbon had a lot of them. When I got to Toronto, I asked my mom, “Where are the slums?” She told me there were none. I’d left my friends and my school behind so, at first, I wasn’t happy to be here. But after a few months, I remember thinking, There is opportunity here. I don’t believe any issue will define this country more than housing. We can’t attract the talent or the investments to do the big projects—or maintain the values and social harmony we have today—if people don’t have stability.

You said that, in those younger years, you thought of Toronto as “a city that worked.” Not to belabour this point, but housing-wise, for a lot of people, it doesn’t anymore.

When I was first elected to Toronto city council in 2010, nobody cared about housing. It was considered a “poverty issue” at the time—a little subcommittee that met four times a year. We couldn’t get a headline. So now, when I hear people saying, “Oh no, housing!” I’m like, Goddammit, if you’d just listened to us back in the day it wouldn’t be as bad as it is. I’m frustrated and hopeful at the same time.

It seems like the three levels of government are still working at cross purposes when it comes to housing affordability. Last October, the Ontario government was considering a proposal that would have effectively eliminated rent control in the province. Historically, Vancouver has had some of the most restrictive zoning laws in North America. You have a reputation for being a consensus builder. How do you use that skill to crack the whip, so to speak?

One important note is that BCH is not going to be in policy. But, as an example, our agreement with the city of Ottawa includes waivers of all the development charges on our lands. We’re at the table specifically talking about all these issues: those charges, zoning, how to make the projects go faster. Once we show the impact of the absence of those barriers, all levels of government will understand the need to get out of the way.

How do you channel your diplomatic side to deal with all these competing interests?

When you come to a new country, you have to learn a new language. You learn techniques to insert yourself—to get your points across. For me, it was always, How do I make it better for the people that come after me? But it’s also about the end results. When I was at the city of Toronto, I used to talk about “feel-good policy.” A lot of my old colleagues were adamant that we needed an inclusionary-zoning policy that would require developers to devote 30 per cent of new builds to affordable units. We brought in specialists to help us with the math, and they said, “If you go with 30, no projects will happen.” I’d say, “Isn’t it better to get five per cent and have things actually happen?”

One more math question: last year, the parliamentary budget officer projected that BCH’s efforts would only create about 26,000 units in the next five years, a “modest” contribution toward Canada’s housing supply. Seems like they’re already saying you’re not going to make a big difference.

That 26,000 projection is based on a model that only counts homes that are fully funded by BCH. In reality, we’re facilitating the units getting built, whether as a result of grants, loans, partnerships or developing them ourselves. If you look at our first 100 days, we’ve already announced over 7,000 units. So 26,000 is not going to be the case; I believe we’ll exceed that.

One hundred days is nothing in the government scheme of things.

One of the first things the Prime Minister announced was 700 units in Nunavut. By the end of April or the beginning of May, we’ll have people living in them.

Will the tedious spectre of the trade war impact Canada’s ability to power-build?

Build Canada Homes follows the Buy Canadian policy. In some cases, that might be a challenge. For example, right now, if you’re building the mechanical portion of a tower, we’ve heard from some industry workers that it’s hard to buy Canadian versions of some of those components. Still, this is an opportunity to develop our sectors here and become leaders in some of the new ways of building: mass timber, factory-built, all of that.

Have any bleeding-edge, made-in-Canada innovations really wowed you so far?

There have been huge advancements in modular housing since we did our first projects in Toronto. If someone had talked to me about 3D printing 15 years ago, I would’ve said, “You’re dreaming.”

And inviting in private-sector partnerships isn’t going to worsen the financialization of housing? Do you have any protective measures in place to make sure private actors aren’t inordinately profiting off those deals?

In the structure of the deals we do with them—we can, absolutely. We need to involve the private sector to create speed and scale. We can partner with them to create a bit more predictability in building, so people can move around—so they’re not stuck.

Full disclosure: my current apartment and I just celebrated a double-digit anniversary. There’s a bit of PTSD among renters of my generation—who just stopped getting razzed for our bougie toast habits. We’re thinking, Is this really going to get resolved in our lifetime? Are we just the sacrificial lambs for all the government’s housing experiments? Do you field a lot of these kinds of complaints?

From my own family.

Your nieces or nephews? Or…

I have cousins. We hear it at the dinner table, in the coffee shops. It’s very present.

Your dad was in construction, right?

He was until he had a bad accident. He almost got killed on a job site, so he was forced to retire.

Did he impart any handy skills to you?

Not so much. He was in heavy labour, cement finishing. I can tell you all the buildings he worked on, though. Every time we drove around the city, he’d show them to me: “Oh yes, that one! I worked on that one! And that one!”

Have any books, thinkers—even encounters with Canadians—radically shifted the way you think about housing?

I used to take the subway to city hall. There was always one lady outside my entrance asking for money. Most mornings, I’d buy her coffee. We started calling each other “sweetie”—“Oh, good morning, sweetie!” “Hi, sweetie!” One day, she just wasn’t there. A few months later, I went to visit a tower-renewal project—the city would work with landlords to turn them into affordable housing. The building had a Coffee Time beside it—and Sweetie was there! She said, “I live here now. You have to come see my home.” It was a small bachelor, but had all her stuff, her clothes. The space was impeccable. The pride on her face—my god, I’ll never forget it. Again, it’s that sense of stability, that ownership of space.

You still live in Toronto. Have you ever thought of moving somewhere else? Not necessarily for financial reasons.

Never say never, but I’ve moved once in my life. That was traumatic enough.

What are your favourite cheap-ish things to do here?

I love people-watching. I get a coffee, go to a park or a patio and just sit. I think that’s the sociology major in me.

Speaking of human drama, I read that you like telenovelas.

Oh my god. Where did you get that?

Digging is also my job. Do you have a favourite series?

I like ones that don’t make me think and that I can fall asleep to—those are usually the criteria. I’ll watch them on Netflix or at my parents’ place on the Portuguese TV channel. You can skip a week and you miss nothing; they help me relax. You know politics: the stress. I got a dog when I was first elected. People thought I was completely insane. I just told them I needed some unconditional love in my life. When you have people screaming at you the whole day, that dog is going to come in handy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.