Nicolina SavelliJuly 20, 2022 at 12:00 AM31 min read

E56: Why Affordable Housing is Within Reach for Canadians with Mark Kenney

"It's a matter of really changing the housing strategy completely in our country and coming up with things that make more sense.” — @MKenneyCAPREIT

While there are regional variations, it's no secret that, for many people in Canada, housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Today's guest, however, believes that the answer to solving Canada's housing crisis is right in front of us. In this episode, we sit down with Mark Kenney, President and CEO of CAPREIT, to discuss some of the policies that are driving rapidly escalating housing costs in the country and why a land lease approach is the obvious solution. Mark has nearly 30 years of experience in the multifamily sector, having previously held senior positions at Realstar Management Partnership, Greenwin Property Management, and Tridel. He is also a board member and prior chair of the Federation of Rental Housing Providers of Ontario, a board member of St. Hilda's Towers, and a founding board member of the GTAA. For those who don't know, CAPREIT is Canada's largest publicly traded provider of rental housing, which owns or has interests in nearly 67,000 residential apartment suites, townhomes, and manufactured housing community sites across Canada, the Netherlands, and Ireland.

Tuning in today, you'll get a glimpse into what the land lease model entails, who it appeals to, and why affordable housing is within reach for Canadians, so make sure not to miss this insightful conversation with CAPREIT's Mark Kenney!

Key Points From This Episode:

What led Mark to the multifamily sector nearly 30 years ago and what made him stay
One of the most challenging parts of Mark's career: the human tragedies he witnesses
The important role that a strong team played in CAPREIT's success during COVID
Insight into CAPREIT's land lease approach to affordable housing
A look at the 13,000 communities that offer land lease opportunities across Canada
Mark's belief that land leases in rural settings are the obvious solution to the affordable housing crisis in Canada
Why a land lease model is especially appealing to first-time buyers, families, and retirees
Overcoming barriers put in place by the Planning Act and inclusionary zoning policies
What the next year looks like for the rental housing market with cost pressures on all fronts
Why Mark believes it's time to change the housing strategy and create better solutions
How CAPREIT is creating safe accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, starting with shortcutting housing requirements
The municipal service requirements that are at the heart of Canada's housing crisis
The impact of remote work and the trend towards settling in rural versus urban locations

Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:

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Episode Transcript

MK: "This has been used three times, specifically with the US government to solve the affordability crisis. Twenty-three million Americans live in a manufactured home and we have less than a half a percent of Canadians that do.”

[00:00:13] NS: Hello, and welcome to Sync or Swim, a weekly podcast, brought to you by Rentsync, where we take a deep dive into the PropTech, multifamily, and rental housing industry. In each episode, we uncover the technologies and strategies used to help overcome operational challenges and increase the value of your multi-family investments. Let's get into our conversation today.

[00:00:38] NS: Welcome back to Sync or Swim. I'm your host, Nicolina Savelli. On this podcast, I chat with multifamily and PropTech experts to learn how you can reach more renters, sign more leases, and maximize the value of your assets. Today, I have a very special guest on the show, one that requires no introduction, but I will do my best to give him one he deserves. Mark Kenney, the President and CEO of CAPREIT is here.

Mark has over 20 years of experience in the multifamily sector and as Chief Operating Officer prior to joining CAPREIT. Mark also held senior positions at Realstar Management Partnership, overseeing portfolios in Western Canada and Northern Ontario, with his career including leadership roles at Greenwin Property Management and Tridel, where he managed various portfolios in the Greater Toronto Area. Mark is also a board member and prior chair of the Federation of Rental Housing Providers of Ontario, a board member of St. Hilda's Towers, and was a founding board member of the GTAA.

For those who don't know, CAPREIT is Canada's largest publicly traded provider of rental housing, which owns or has interests in nearly 67,000 residential apartment suites, townhomes, and manufactured housing community sites across Canada, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Mark, thank you so much for joining me today. That is definitely the longest introduction I've ever had to do, but it was all worth saying, so I had to include it. Thank you so much, Mark, for joining me. It's great to see you.

[00:02:10] MK: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:11] NS: Now, this conversation has been a few months in the works. I'm really glad that we were able to sit down and have it and find some time. Before we kind of really dive into conversation around CAPREIT and what you're seeing across the multifamily sector right now, I'd first really just like to ask a few questions about you and your career. First of all, I'm curious to know what led you into the multifamily sector nearly 30 years ago and what made you stay?

[00:02:38] MK: Great questions. I thought about these questions when you and I were talking. For me personally, it goes just back to dreams that we all have when we're kids and the things that you're drawn to. When I was very young, I was drawn to the whole idea of homeownership. I used to – back in the day, you could grab these free magazines of home listings that were for sale. I was obsessed with why one house with a pool was more than another house with this. It just became like a dreaming exercise as a kid to see these expensive homes, and how much things cost. I was drawn to real estate.

When I met my wife, she lived in a Tridel condominium. For me, that was – I never knew people lived in hotels. It was like, there was an indoor pool, and a squash court, and all these amenities. Again, I was captivated by sort of a dreaming lifestyle living kind of thing. I basically asserted with her mother who worked for Tridel that I would do anything to work for that company. In fact, I'd worked for free, if they would have me.

[00:03:41] NS: That's awesome.

[00:03:41] MK: Because I was just so passionate, excited about real estate that I think that's just a lesson. If you're really drawn to something, you'll ultimately find success, but that's what got me into it. Why I stayed is another story. Really, apartments were in pretty rough shape in the early 90s. There'd been rent control in Ontario and Heartland stock was in a bad spot. I had started in condo managements, and I was very young. I looked like I was 12 when I was in my early 20s. Really, what I was told was there was great opportunity in the rental sector, and it was somewhere nobody wanted to go. It wasn't an attractive sector to go into. That's where I went, and quite frankly, I was successful in my career because there weren't a lot of people to compete with.

[00:04:32] NS: That's great, you know what – you're forward thinking, you got into an industry before it got big and that's how people make it. I mean, when there's no competition in the market yet, there you go. That's how real estate investors do their thing too, right?

[00:04:46] MK: Exactly.

[00:04:47] NS: They find the places that people don't know about yet, so that makes sense. I mean, obviously, you've built a wonderful, successful career, and you've learned and grown with this industry that has clearly become a lot more popular over the years. I have to ask this and I have to bring it up. But after two and a half years of the pandemic, I'd be remiss not to ask what has been the most difficult or challenging part of your career so far? Has it been the last two and a half years or were there other points that you can think that was worse?

[00:05:19] MK: Well, there's never I don't think a real winner when it comes to challenges in multifamily. We've had horrible – because you're in people's lives, we've been witness to a lot of sad things that can happen to families. That's always difficult to deal with. A lot of people don't realize that the people that work in our buildings at the frontline become very attached, obviously, with the residents. They sadly are witness to sad human stuff.

[00:05:46] NS: Sure.

[00:05:46] MK: We've had our share of tragedies. I think COVID just put us in a very uncertain environment, all of us. Not just CAPREIT, everybody. Knowing how it was going to work out, none of us really knew. We were making it up each day, and dealing – again, when everybody was home, because of the nature of the pandemic, well, that's where our business was. We had a lot of stress, and anxiety in our business, because people were home. That's our job. I got to tell you, it was difficult, but the resilience of our staff, you hear a lot of business leaders talk about this. I can't help but be grateful every day for the people that work at CAPREIT, because so many people bring passion to the job, and they care for frontline staff, genuinely, genuinely care for the residents. In a lot of cases like their family. In some cases, they are their substitute families.

[00:06:43] NS: Right. They see them more than their family.

[00:06:45] MK: Yeah. It's been tough, because you get a mixture of that, and you get a mixture of people's anxieties being high. When they're at home with what's been going on, they bring those anxieties into the offices sometimes. That's tough on the staff. We had frontline workers too. They were all in full PPE gear, just like the hospital workers. They were putting themselves at risk every day. It's difficult, but we're coming out of it now.

[00:07:09] NS: Yes, which is good. We are kind of reaching this maybe endemic stage of the pandemic, but we'll see what the fall brings. But I just have to ask along those lines, do you think there were anything initially, any things in the beginnings that you did as an organization, that you feel really set you up for success moving forward, moving through these communications, how you handled it overall. Obviously, no one knew how to handle it. So, anything that you could share that you kind of feel like, okay, that was the best thing we could have done.

[00:07:42] MK: We are very fortunate we have great people. We rolled out our tenant portal almost the same week, sort of mid-March era of the pandemic. What was supposed to take seven months to roll out, we rolled out in less than seven weeks across the country, which gave us the ability to talk to our residents online, and allowed them to put work order requests in and really do proper communication. That has just like completely changed the nature of our business. What I think is, that in general, when it comes to using technology, I think the whole world advanced 10 years into, if not more. The whole idea of using video to communicate and have meetings, this is something we could never have imagined. Flex work at the stage that it's at right now would have been an imaginary concept a few years ago, and it's here to stay with us now. So many different factors actually helped with efficiency, and made us old timers use technology when we may have never otherwise done so.

[00:08:47] NS: Right. Now, it's ingrained in your organization, and you couldn't imagine if you would go back to that. I had a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago, and they said that they have a real estate platform that they provide for pre-construction. They said that prior to pandemic, only about 5% to 10% were doing their pre-construction marketing and things through technology, through the platform. Now, it's 95%. From lead to lease, the whole way through, they're 100% using technology to do so. It's just crazy how many processes have gone online, and gone digital in the last two and a half years. You know what, it's not even as hard as I think – it is difficult, but it's also – it seems like everyone kind of just figured it out together, so that was good to see.

I do want to talk about something that's obviously very important and very important to everyone, but also to CAPREIT. Affordable housing has probably been one of the most widely talked about issues in recent years, and something that CAPREIT is taking very seriously. Can you share some of the initiatives that your organization is currently taking to kind of combat this specifically in reference to land leasing opportunities?

[00:10:02] MK: That's a big one. For people that don't know, a land lease is a community where the resident owns their home, but they lease the land. The idea there is, when you don't have to buy the land and have that burden, it makes housing generally more affordable. Okay? In our manufactured home communities, we've got these homes, brand new bungalows, 1,300 square feet under $200,000 for less than the cost of average rent, okay? When you factor in the cost of an under $200,000 home, and the lease payment, you're in extreme affordability. This has been used three times, specifically with the US government to solve affordability crisis. Twenty-three million Americans live in a manufactured home and we have less than a half a percent of Canadians that do.

People think, "Well, what is this?" They immediately think of the trailer park boys or like really bad, bad images. The truth could not be more opposite. These are tiny eco homes. I would argue with 1,300 square foot bungalow is not even that tiny. It's better than condo living and they're built in a controlled environment. When you build these homes in a factory, there's less energy leakage in the construction. They're very, very specifically, in most cases, now robotically built, which again, sounds negative. But when you see the finishes of them, they're absolutely beautiful, and absolutely dignified living and gets people into the homeownership market at $200,000. Now, this isn't for cities, where land is expensive. This is more of a rural setting kind of solution, but great for seniors, great for families. The new communities are just beautiful.

[00:11:48] NS: Where are some of these new communities that currently you offer land lease opportunities for?

[00:11:52] MK: We have almost 13,000 sites across the country. They're typically within 20 minutes of a smaller destination. Like Orillia for example, 15 minutes outside of Orillia in Ontario, we've got three different communities that are beautiful for. Commuting distance to big cities, but really, this is a rural setting. There's a reason for that too, actually.

[00:12:14] NS: Okay. Would you please share?

[00:12:16] MK: It's pretty profound, actually. About 15 to 20 years ago, the Planning Act across the country was changed so that all dense housing had to be on municipal services, had to be. What does that mean? Water, gas, hydro, all are municipal services. Okay. But now, let's stop and think for a minute. Have you ever been to a cottage? Have you ever been to a house outside the city? All of those homes are on septic and well. Okay? Absolutely nothing wrong with septic and well, nothing. But because the act was changed, you can't get zoning for multiple dwellings in a rural setting. Every time you drive down a highway and you see a house, it's on a well and it's on a septic.

Ontario, listen to this, what are the concerns that government had was freshwater. Ontario has more freshwater than any other region on the planet Earth. We have 400,000 lakes in the province of Ontario. If you look through the Hubble telescope, you will not find another region with more freshwater than Ontario. Yet, the Planning Act was changed for worries about freshwater. Because of that, nobody's been developing these communities, so nobody's talking about it. There's only one party that we know of that are developing new communities in all of Canada, and they're only producing a couple 100 a year, but we could build hundreds of thousands of single family homes here if we just got changes to the Planning Act happening.

[00:14:01] NS: Right. Yeah. I have a cottage in a place called Selkirk. There's a place called Featherstone Point. Because Hamilton, Toronto area become less and less affordable, people are moving there full time. It's a cottage town, but everything's on well, everything's on septic or cistern, and people are moving their full time into their leased cottage land properties. They're seeing it as a way to get into the market. That's just how they're seeing it. It's the best that they can do right now, so it's a great opportunity for those who are wondering, how am I ever going to afford a home? How am I ever going to raise a family in a 500 square foot Toronto condo? I've heard now that they're like 250 square feet now for like 600k, which is insane to me.

[00:14:49] MK: I agree, this is an alternative. With technology and more inclination to work from home, it's something that we must be looking at in Canada if we're serious about solving the affordability crisis. The answer is right in front of us, it's not theoretical. It's absolutely proved, lots of evidence of how this looks. Crazy thing is, in the US, the number one deterrent to these communities with manufactured homes because the homes don't have basements. They're permanent homes, but they're put on a pad. The US, the problem is natural disaster risk, like hurricanes and tornadoes, which we don't have in Canada. So, our climate is even more ideally suited for these kinds of communities.

[00:15:29] NS: Right. Now, I think you did mention it. Who are the ideal renters or who are you seeing as the people who are most interested in kind of these types of properties? As a secondary question, how are you kind of reaching them and communicating what you're doing right now to let them know this is a viable opportunity, a solution for them?

[00:15:48] MK: It's almost everybody. Any city in Canada that has a $400,000 home market, has a $200,000 manufactured home market. A lot of seniors want to sell their home and retire on the difference. 400 has become a nothing in our country, even with today's interest rates. A $200,000 home, the question is, who does that appeal to? I think the answer is everybody. If you're prepared to live in a rural setting, you've qualified yourself as somebody that would be interested in doing this. It's not talking to the market, it's talking to municipalities to get them to change their minds. But the Planning Act is in our way, and this is a big problem for municipalities to overcome, is the bravery to make changes there. That's the problem. It's kind of easy just to go with the old road block.

[00:16:37] NS: Of course, which leads me to kind of my next question. I'd love to know your opinion on this, but we saw the inclusionary zoning policy changes in Toronto recently. Well, about six months ago, an attempt to create affordable housing in the GTA. What are your thoughts on this? In general, Canadian municipalities involvement in the housing crisis right now.

[00:16:59] MK: There's all good intentions. Government has, they have good intentions. But the reality is the idea of inclusionary zoning is forcing developers to provide units at predetermined levels, which costs money. It makes the other units more expensive. The problem is, when we had these ever-declining interest rates and more development, before the supply chain issues and inflationary pressures, yes, people were building products, not enough, but they were building. When government looks at that, they think, "Well, they're building, so we can force these things." But nobody is forced to develop. When you put more challenges to making them viable, in an environment where things cost more, people cost more, land costs more, it doesn't help create more housing. It does the opposite.

The other thing that's going on that defies logic is development fees in the city of Toronto have doubled at a time when we're in a housing crisis and need more product. It doesn't create more housing, taxes don't build homes, and regulation doesn't incent more investment. Inclusionary zoning, development fees, all of the challenges of cost. Developers will pan out what they want to make in terms of a margin. If that margin is not there, they won't build.

[00:18:32] NS: Of course, and that's why they're buying single family homes and creating an even further crisis for families to get into the market and making that a whole –

[00:18:41] MK: That's an ideology problem that we disagree with. We're in the business of multifamily housing, but multifamily. Who's to deny someone the right to buy a property and rent it out? I guess that's the Canadian way. But when you start getting this done en mass, it's a big problem. It's a big problem. I do think that is an area where, for existing homes, government does have a role in regulating intervention. Where it's multifamily, I, of course, follow the belief that less rules are better to attract capital.

There's never been more money in the history of ever, for housing, investment capital. There are trillions of dollars on the sidelines that want nothing more than to invest in housing, because it's the great crisis of the planet Earth. But that money will not come in if it's an uncertain environment. That's a simple, simple rule of business that I think we have to look at. You can't just attack the developers. They're not the bad guys. There's a jealousy in human nature where if somebody is perceived to be making a profit, that's a sin. But who else is going to do it?

[00:19:56] NS: Of course. You need them to do, you need them to invest, you need them to at least see that there's going to be a worthy outcome for their time, their investment, and everything with inflation happening and, potentially, a recession happening and interest rates still remaining high. It just doesn't look like a positive outcome for anyone right now, when it comes to building and creating supply. It's like, we're at a standstill almost. It is kind of scary, and you know that, of course, this is a question that I have a little bit later. But maybe, I'm going to approach it now just in a different way.

It's really around how the recession and people not being able to get into the market right now, because of interest rates, and discretionary spending, how the next year or so is going to look for rental housing itself. Because if people can't buy, they have to rent. How are we going to deal with the supply then, when we're already crunched for supply?

[00:20:57] MK: We've got so many problems here. I'll answer your question. The problem on top of it, though, is we desperately need immigration because our job situation here, we need people that are prepared to work, and do the kind of work that we need to keep our economy going. Where are they going to live? Government has limitations on what it can do to build housing. Government cannot build all the housing in the country. If you look at Toronto Community Housing as an example, it's not necessarily the best evidence of how government can run housing. That's nothing against government. It really isn't. I think there's a lot of good people doing the best they possibly can, but there is a role for business in our country.

I think, to answer your question, it's a pretty bleak outlook when you have cost pressures on all fronts. You have cost pressures with development fees. You have cost pressures with things like inclusionary zoning, cost pressures with inflation, cost pressures with interest rates. All of these things are combining together at a time when regulation is being considered the answer. Okay? That's not going to draw investment in, it's not. At the same time, we are, rightfully so, opening our gates to the rest of the world. That's going to put additional demand on the problem. You can't have responsible immigration policy without having responsible housing policy. For decades in Canada, housing was affordable, so it didn't matter. You could have immigration policy without that consideration, but things changed about five years ago, when the housing market started really getting in trouble and it's still not linked together is my concern.

Now, I think, to give government fair due, they're dealing with very complicated issues here. But I think what we all want is to engage and be part of the solution. Some big changes, like we talked about the Planning Act, being one with manufactured home development, things like that have got to get looked at. In Canada, we have three levels of government. You've got the municipal government that's deciding all the zoning and development fees. That's ratepayer base. It's not in my backyard, pressures, all of that. You have the federal government who's trying to deal with immigration, so bringing more people in, but they'd have less of an impact on housing. They're really just – that's the Federal issue. You have the provinces in the middle that they don't have much of an option other than regulation. That puts additional pressure on investment. All of these things combined, it's a matter of really changing the housing strategy completely in our country, and coming up with things that make more sense.

[00:23:38] NS: Obviously, that didn't really pan out with our last election or provincial election over here. We didn't really see much of a Housing Strategy get brought to, so it was like, "Who do we vote for? I don't know." It doesn't really matter at this point. No one knows what to do.

[00:23:55] MK: No one knows what to do. We're all just kind of sad and looking at the window.

[00:23:58] NS: Yeah. Now, speaking of, obviously, immigration and refugees, where there's clearly a war in Ukraine happening right now due to the Russian invasion, and that is creating an urgent need for housing as more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees look towards Canada for safe lodging and accommodations. Now, I know CAPREIT is involved in trying to help create available housing in the market. How are you doing this for these individuals and these people coming in?

[00:24:28] MK: We're shortcutting all requirements for housing for starters, just making it easy. A lot of people don't have documentation yet, they don't have bank accounts yet. They don't have anything yet. We got incentive package for settlement, because we know it takes time to get some money organized and that kind of thing. We've done big incentive packages for people, like relief packages. The other thing we've done is we've had these kids that were getting treated for critical care issues in the Ukraine come over. CAPREIT, internally, the staff just got so incredibly engaged in furnishing 10 units and stocking them completely. We provided a year of free rent for people that are having their kids treated in hospital. We've settled families for that purpose as well.

This is an ongoing part of CAPREIT response. Whenever we have humanitarian, whether it be the Syrian War, problem with Afghan, we've done similar initiatives each and every time. It's part of the ongoing business. Sadly, the Ukraine is just the latest of issues. But we also have got to remember that we have a responsibility to Canadians on affordability too. CAPREIT is the largest sponsor in Canada of rent subsidy programs for different housing agencies across the country. We're constantly looking for ways to give back to the community and provide relief to Canadians that are suffering. It's a complicated issue, because we can't be all things to all people. But, you know, a lot of our staff, like I say, get super engaged in the opportunity to help.

[00:26:02] NS: We just talked about was the fact that we don't have any availability. Now, we're trying to accommodate people who aren't even within our country, who we didn't know were even coming. Now, they're all suddenly here, and we are doing the best we can, obviously, you're doing the best you can to help those who are in urgent need. I salute you guys for doing that, and I know that you're working with our rental listing site, Soulrooms as well, who are trying to find and work with a number of organizations to find safe accommodations for these individuals. Thank you for doing that.

Now, moving on, we've kind of talked about the last two years, what you've done as an organization and help to make resident experiences better and more effective using your online portal. I'd like to talk kind of about more the business side. At the end of Q1, CAPREIT reported monthly rental turnover prices rose by 10.2% in March 31^st, driven mostly by strong demand in BC, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Geographically speaking, are you continuing to see this upwards trend in these regions? Are there other opportunities for multifamily in Canada that CAPREIT is focusing on in terms of expansion and product in the market?

[00:27:15] MK: The first thing that I would say is that percentage increase is only on apartments that turnover, which is a very small percentage of our apartments. I'll put a little plug in here for CAPREIT. Over the last three years, all of our residents, all of our customers coast to coast have had a 1% annual increase in rent, despite inflation. That's what the average has been. Okay. That is for over 85% of the people that live in a CAPREIT unit. Now, the apartments that turnover, which is again, a very small percentage, that's where those hikes are.

[00:27:54] NS: That's the 10.2%?

[00:27:55] MK: Yeah. We're trying to manage 85% of the people that get a 1% increase with the turnover units that are a little bit higher. That's what's funds, all of the capital improvement program to keep the buildings in good shape. So, this year, for example, we'll invest over $400 million in upgrade programs. Okay. All of that comes on the back of not the increased money, but the ability for us to raise more capital based on the path of rents going up. The market, again, we're not driving the market, where CAPREIT is less than 1% of the [inaudible 00:28:33] market. But in the overall market, things are hot in Vancouver and Toronto. These are the two markets, and Montreal to a certain extent.

Here's a crazy Canadian fact. We only really have three cities, kind of 11, but Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. They're all islands.. So you go, "What do you mean, Mark?" Well, Montreal is an island. Toronto, is landlocked and water-locked. You have Lake Ontario, you've got a Greenbelt. But inside the Greenbelt, you've got hundreds of thousands of single family homes. What's left is a very small island of land. Vancouver, it's the same thing. You've got the oceans, you got the mountains, you've got a Greenbelt, and inside is a very small piece of land. Now, you go back to what I said before about municipal services. Everything's on municipal services. This is why land is so incredibly expensive and housing is so incredibly expensive in our country, because you can only really build scale on municipal services. That's wrong. That is absolutely fundamentally at the heart of what's wrong in Canada with housing.

Then you go to the other cities, and you look at places like Edmonton, I'll talk about, and Calgary, where pricing is okay, because it's unregulated and there's limitless land. It just keeps sprawling out into the prairies, basically. That's where housing is most imbalanced and highly affordable, okay? This is the story that plays out in the rest of Canada. Places like London, Ontario, or I'll use Ottawa as a better example. Those markets are getting expensive, again, because the municipal services requirements, but also because of urbanization. Everybody's going to the bigger places as a place to live. Hopefully, we see that trend change and get the pressure off of those places.

[00:30:24] NS: I don't know what your feelings are on remote work, but I feel like if remote work, or at least hybrid work is an option long-term, people may gravitate more and settle rather than just think it's a temporary solution and settle in more rural locations versus urban locations. I think that we saw a little bit of that, or a lot of that in some places during COVID, is we saw secondary markets really start to rise in some tertiary markets as well. But we also saw a return to urban centres. It was like, people are missing some parts of it.

Unless there's development happening, it feels like people always want to kind of go back to that environment, and also be close to work in those spots, because maybe people aren't as open to hybrid accommodations for work. That's kind of how I see if we really want to push people outside of that and go the – Calgary, Edmonton being able to move away and then build their own little communities, then that's kind of what we have to do here as well, but it's a complicated issue, obviously.

[00:31:34] MK: It is. It's an issue that needs a lot of money to solve.

[00:31:37] NS: Yes. Right now, it feels like, where are we going to get that money? Now, Mark, I've done all my questions with you today. I want to thank you so much for joining me. I know that your time is precious and I do have one very quick question. If listeners are looking to follow you or are interested in learning more about what CAPREIT is doing, where should they go?

[00:31:59] MK: For those people that are on LinkedIn, we put lots of interesting information on both the CAPREIT website, on LinkedIn. I also have a page where I do some commentary. If you want to learn a bit the product that CAPREIT has, our website is a wealth of information at capreit.ca. If you really want to just have curious questions, then just call us. We do respond. I'm happy to get back to people to the extent that I can. We have over 200,000 residents in the portfolio and I do my very best to get back to people when they're concerned about something.

[00:32:30] NS: Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and for taking the time to join me on this episode of Sync or Swim. Until next time, keep swimming.