Overview

• BC Housing, Manitoba Housing, and Social Housing Services Corporation (Ontario), as part of Housing Partnership Canada recognized the lack of access to efficient financing in the affordable housing sector and wanted to investigate the possibility of creating a housing finance entity which would aggregate capital needs of the sector and access the capital markets on their behalf

MPA’s Role and Key Considerations

• MPA was first engaged to conduct a market study and report of the affordable housing sector in Canada and the feasibility of creating a brand-new affordable housing finance entity that would aggregate the capital needs of affordable housing developers all over Canada and access the debt capital markets to serve those capital needs
• This culminated in various subsequent mandates:
  • Engaged to assist with the creation of all aspects of affordable housing finance entity 
  • Engaged to assist with obtaining a credit rating to access the Canadian debt market 
  • Engaged for the execution of the company’s capital market strategy of a $33M IPO
• Across these mandates, MPA conducted several financial analyses, prepared key documents such as a business case, assessed the appropriate credit rating, provided guidance throughout the Request for Proposal process, assisted in determining issue pricing, and negotiated both the underwriting engagement letter and the S&P engagement

Outcome

• HIC’s initial offering of long-term fixed rate capital markets debt is supporting a number of very important affordable housing projects in different locations of Canada
• It is expected that this platform will be used for years to come delivering efficient financing to developers of affordable housing across Canada