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Avery Helm is hopeful a community land trust will provide housing stability in West Broadway. (Ian Froese/CBC)
Residents in a Winnipeg neighbourhood want to buy up land and protect it as affordable housing for years to come.
West Broadway is getting Winnipeg’s first community land trust, where existing housing is purchased and treated as a community resource rather than an asset held by a person or business. The housing model is intended to keep homes affordable permanently.
“I like the idea of housing that is not owned by a landlord or a company that has landlords … the community getting to decide what to do with the space and making sure it stays affordable,” Avery Helm, a tenant in West Broadway, said Thursday night at the launch party of the West Broadway Community Land Trust, hosted at The Handsome Daughter.
The idea started to take shape in 2024 as people in the neighbourhood watched landlords apply for above-guideline rent increases or evict tenants to repair homes and jack up the rent for the next tenant, a news release said.
That led to the creation of the community land trust, run by the community and funded with money set aside by the West Broadway Community Organization, which receives funding from the province and several other public and private partners.
Rental housing the focus
They intend to buy existing properties and preserve them as affordable units with rents below the median rate. They plan to first buy a 10- to 15- unit apartment complex later this year, said Stefan Hodges, housing co-ordinator at the West Broadway Community Organization.
Given that 93 per cent of the neighbourhood are renters, “we really wanted to focus on affordable rental housing,” Hodges said.
“Our model is looking at trying to protect affordable rentals that already exists in the neighbourhood where people are already living, but also supporting the existing non-profits and co-ops because we have this really rich variety of existing community housing in the neighbourhood.”
He believes a community land trust can offer stability at a time when tenants are coping with issues outside of their control, such as high rent increases, renovictions and building ownership changes.
Stefan Hodges, housing co-ordinator at West Broadway Community Organization, said the community land trust will preserve affordability for some of the neighbourhood’s rental stock. (Ian Froese/CBC)
Helm contends some rental agencies don’t do enough to maintain their buildings, which is why she’s encouraged by new types of ownership structures like a community land trust and got involved with the group a few weeks ago.
Katherine Carruthers, a West Broadway resident for more than 20 years, considers this housing approach the way of the future.
“It’s where we have to go with the planning for affordable housing to help people live better,” she said, arguing lower housing costs will give tenants more money to spend on life’s other necessities.
There are approximately 50 community land trusts across Canada, according to the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts.
West Broadway had a land trust in the early 2000s, but Hodges said it faltered due to a lack of funding.
In this iteration, the organization will start with one apartment complex and buy more properties if the grant money is available.