A new report has found that Newfoundland and Labrador lags well behind the rest of the country in terms of the supply of community housing.

The Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and Annex Consulting teamed up on “Breaking the Bottleneck: Catalysts for Expansion in NL’s Community Housing Sector.”

Community housing is the type that you would see at Stella’s Circle in St. John’s, or Choices for Youth. It’s operated by a non-profit or cooperative entity. It comprises only 0.3 per cent of all housing in NL, but 4 per cent nationally.

Hope Jamieson, the founder of Annex Consulting, sees development of community housing as a solution to the current crunch.

“It’s not subject to pressures of the market like other housing does,” she says. “It means communities have control of their own destinies also.”

She says everyone is looking for so-called “shovel-ready” projects, but she says there isn’t enough support to get community housing projects in NL to the stage of shovel-readiness. That means we’re losing out on billions of dollars in economic activity.

She says we see all kinds of development projects that are stalled in rural areas because they can’t get workers as there is no place to live.

“We lose out on the broader impact but also the direct economic impact of just building the houses.”