Mustard Seed says there’s not enough available affordable housing in Calgary

A campaign, highlighting affordable housing in the city, is gaining a lot of attention.

The Mustard Seed is not saying there is no affordable housing in Calgary, but rather there is none available.

With a vacancy rate of 1.4%, the waiting lists are long and so many people are in desperate need of affordable housing right now.

The organization, along with a communications company, has taken out an ad on Airbnb, which is an online classified for places for people to get a place to stay while the homeowner is away.

But instead of a cozy bedroom, the ad is for a street corner behind a dumpster.

It’s been dubbed as the “Trigger” campaign and will run until December 24th.

The aim is to bring attention to the lack of available affordable housing in the city, something that Mustard Seed spokesperson Karen Taylor-Binnie says is at crisis level.

“If you’re looking for a place to stay in Calgary, you might check out Airbnb. Imagine if you were homeless, these are the kinds of places you would stay. You can donate to the Mustard Seed or another homeless agency in Calgary to help people not spending the night there.”

Taylor-Binnie adds while this campaign coincides with the secondary suite debate at City Hall it was not on purpose, noting that with the vacancy being so low, it’s hard for anyone to find a home in the city.

The Seed recently opened the 1010 Centre, which provides 224 apartments for low-income Calgarians and is the largest affordable housing initiative in Canada.

Affordable housing is also a big part of the Calgary Homeless Foundation’s 10-year plan to end homelessness, which the Mustard Seed supports as one of several community members.

The organization says more than 38,000 renter households are in need of affordable housing and another 33,580 households that own their own home are at risk of losing them as they are one or two paychecks away from not being able to pay their mortgage.