Should a household with an annual income of $153,648 be living in government-run social housing?

Or what about households with incomes of $137,340 or $98,844 per year? Do those seem like “low income” to you?

If you said “no” to those questions you might be surprised to know those are the actual household incomes of people living in government-run social housing in Manitoba. In fact, there are several other instances of high-income earners levels in government housing; thus, a review of the situation definitely makes sense.

You see, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a donation-based taxpayers’ watchdog organization, found those examples after investigating the incomes of those living in government-run Manitoba Housing units.

We looked into the program in Manitoba as our Alberta office discovered Alberta taxpayers were actually paying to put roofs over the heads of some high-income earners. For example, this past summer we discovered one individual was making close to $172,000 while living in a government-run housing complex in Calgary.

When we looked into the numbers here in Manitoba we found a similar story. Government data showed some tenants had claimed monthly incomes equating to the aforementioned annual income levels of $153,648, $137,340 and $98,844.

Beyond those three high-rollers, there were two other households in the $90,000-$99,999 block, three in the $80,000-$89,999 category, 23 in the $70,000-$79,999 category, 52 in the $60,000-69,999 block and 65 making between $50,000-$59,999.

Clearly this isn’t some kind of anomaly.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation sent the figures to the government minister responsible and to the media. We urged the minister to look into the situation for several reasons.

First, people don’t pay their taxes so the government can put roofs over the heads of high-income people. Even if the government claims these people are paying a market-based rent each month, the government shouldn’t be taking on the risk associated with building and managing apartment units for high-income people. There are thousands of privately-owned apartments where these people can live.

If there are low-income people waiting for access to the units, they should have the opportunity to rent them. If there aren’t any low-income people waiting to rent such units (eg. the units could be in a small community) then the government should look at selling the units.

Further, if the government could force some high-income earners out, and free up space for true low-income people to move in, this could potentially reduce the number of new units the government claims it ‘needs’ to build.

Finally, taking money out of the equation, freeing up space for true low-income people just seems to make sense. In the long-term people can debate how effective government-owned housing programs are versus other models (eg. voucher systems whereby government pays for low-income people to rent privately-built apartments), but in the meantime the units have already been built and should be available to give a hand-up to true low-income people.

Ever since the Selinger government broke their election promise and raised the provincial sales tax, we’ve been highlighting all kinds of ways the government could have saved money instead of raising taxes.

This issue is just another example. Hopefully you can help convince the government to home in on this matter more closely.

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