The Infrastructure for Housing Initiative (IHI) addresses Canada's housing affordability challenges by investing in essential public infrastructure to enable and accelerate new housing construction. The initiative allows public infrastructure to be built faster and at larger scale today, in anticipation of future growth.

The program benefits municipalities, universities, Indigenous communities and other public entities. Infrastructure may be built by either the public or private sector.

CIB's Lending Product:

The Canada Infrastructure Bank offers low-cost financing while sharing in risks related to the timing of growth. Loan repayments are linked to the increase in housing units as growth materializes.

Additionally, CIB can provide loans directly to developers to unlock new housing growth when the public entity (municipality, university, Indigenous community, or other public sector entity) relies on developers to deliver the necessary enabling infrastructure.

Eligible Infrastructure Types:

Projects must be last-mile and net-new large-scale enabling infrastructure within CIB's existing priority sectors:

Water:

• Water systems
• Wastewater infrastructure
• Stormwater management
• Conveyance systems

Local Civil Works:

• Roads
• Bridges
• Sidewalks
• Accompanying earthworks

Local Transit:

• Stations
• Stops
• Hubs
• Rail infrastructure
• Right of ways
• Terminals

Connectivity:

• District energy systems
• Electricity distribution
• Energy storage
• Broadband infrastructure
• EV charging stations

Project Eligibility Requirements:

1. Minimum investment of $50 million (net of grants)
2. Project must create incremental revenues from resulting growth that are sufficient to repay the loan
3. Borrower must be responsible for delivering public infrastructure (municipal, Indigenous, university, or other public sector entity) or must be a developer endorsed by that entity
4. Project must be new or involve significant necessary upgrades to existing infrastructure
5. Project must enable growth of residential housing units in Canada

Program Benefits:

• Unlocking net-new, incremental housing that would not be possible at the same pace without investment in the enabling infrastructure
• Enabling the build-out of critical public infrastructure in advance of growth while reducing the burden on rate and taxpayers
• Providing access to credit and lower interest rates for smaller municipalities that do not have access to capital markets or a provincial borrowing program
• Allowing wholly-owned municipal subsidiary corporations to take financing off-balance sheet

The initiative works alongside existing federal supports for housing as part of the broader federal approach to address the housing shortage.