Canadian housing

The homes Canada needs, and the capital that never reaches them.

Canada has a housing shortfall measured in millions of units. It also has a large group of citizens whose savings sit outside the property market entirely — not because they lack money or interest, but because the only route in runs through a form of finance their faith does not permit.

The capital that sits out

There are roughly 1.8 million Muslims in Canada, concentrated in exactly the metropolitan areas where housing pressure is worst. A significant share of them will not take a conventional mortgage, will not hold an interest-bearing GIC, and will not buy a bond fund. For many the practical result is savings held in cash for years, losing ground to inflation, while the housing they might have helped finance does not get built.

This is not a small pool and it is not a fringe preference. It is a straightforward case of financial exclusion with a supply-side consequence: capital that would otherwise flow into Canadian housing does not flow at all.

What an equity structure changes

A trust that acquires and develops property using equity rather than debt gives that capital a route in. The investor owns a share of real assets and takes real risk — the properties can lose value, the development can run late, the units can be hard to sell. What they do not do is lend at interest.

The effect at a national level is straightforward. Money that was sitting still starts building homes. That is a benefit that reaches well beyond the people whose beliefs made the structure necessary.

Who this serves

Our community partners

We work with organisations rooted in the communities where we build. They are how we reach people who would never be reached by an advertisement, and they hold us to account locally in a way no regulator can.

Questions