N.B. Housing Corp. and housing advocates are not surprised by the results of the report by the auditor general.

New Brunswick’s auditor general, Paul Martin, finds 85 percent of public housing units do not meet the annual inspections, breaking the government’s own rules. 

On top of inspections the audit has highlighted many major flaws in the New Brunswick Housing Corporation’s (HNB) public housing system in its June 2025 performance audit. 

The report concluded HNB–the body of the provincial government responsible for creating safe, affordable and accessible housing in the province–does not have the systems and practices required to ensure its properties are “well-maintained, safe and habitable for tenants on a timely basis.”

“People shouldn’t have to live in those conditions,” said Paul Martin, NB auditor general, in an interview with The Courier. “NB Housing needs to do better and we’re attempting to hold them accountable.”  

It specifically looks at the province supplied public housing units, some 4,630 units charge rent based on 30 per cent of the household income of the occupant. 

There are 62 units in Charlotte County: 28 in St. Stephen, 14 in St. Andrews, 10 in St. George, and 10 in Blacks Harbour.

HNB currently manages 47 per cent of all affordable housing units in the province and those under the rent supplement program are operated by private landlords. In either of these programs rent is capped at 30 per cent of household income.

The report found that 85 per cent of units did not meet annual interior inspection requirements. It also found that 71 per cent of repairs requiring completion within 24 hours were not completed on time and 36 per cent of all repair work did not achieve the target time for completion. It also noted it took an average of 140 days to fill vacant units compared to the 30 day key performance indicator (KPI) set by the province.

By the end of 2024, when the audit was completed, there were 13,129 households–21,712 individuals–and 6,775 households had been on the waitlist for two years or longer.

HNB confirmed with The Courier that as of June 1, 2025 there are 12,305 households on the waitlist.

In the end the auditor general provided the HNB with 16 recommendations for improvements to be made to the way HNB operates its public housing. In response to the recommendations HNB provided a statement for each one as well as an estimated deadline for completion.

“Housing is a major issue across Canada maybe and perhaps worldwide at the moment,” said Martin. “We’re seeing a lot of need for housing. We thought it important to take a look at what is happening there now.”

The auditor general is an independent officer of the legislature with the task of reviewing the government. The auditor and his office have the freedom to choose what they review and the bodies they wish to audit must supply the necessary information. 

“I believe there’s a reason to speak up for people that may not be being heard. There are safety issues for people that are in some of these homes and some of the matters pull your heart strings,” said Martin. 

In the interview, Martin highlighted the fire that destroyed a 10-unit senior public housing complex near Edmundston that was mentioned in the report. 

“Despite this incident, this region and three others, continued to not conduct annual inspections on their units as are required by policy,” said Martin. “Is it possible that if the inspections were being done by [HNB] in accordance with their own policy–and they’re supposed to do–could that fire have been prevented?”

It cited that even though the exact cause of the fire could not be determined, the Office of the Fire Marshall’s incident report considered the cause to be “electrical in nature.”

The report said there were 3,045 work orders and 53 per cent of the issues were not resolved within the targeted time frames. The pests reported were related to bed bugs, mice/rats, pigeons, roaches, and others.

It also demonstrated HNB does not have enough inspectors to complete the amount of requests, it also showed program officers were completing inspections rather than inspectors.

In a statement, HNB said they are hiring six additional inspectors, three additional maintenance repair workers and one maintenance supervisor to address the shortage.

“These are things that they are supposed to be doing as part of their delivery of their service they are not meeting,” said Martin. “This is part of their mandate, this is what they are required to do and we identified a number of issues in which they need to improve.” 

“NB Housing has a lot of data that we were able to extract from their systems and from the work orders,” Martin said about how they conducted the report. 

He also said the corporation were active participants in the report providing the information necessary for the auditors report. 

“And that’s on us, we know we need to improve our systems,” HNB said in a statement concerning the need to improve data-monitoring systems. The corporation said some of the data obtained by the Auditor General did not accurately capture the work being done within their public housing units.

Much of what it covered in the report is related to a lack of maintenance costs associated with public housing. The reason it has gotten to the point that it has is because of the lack of sustained investment in the upkeep of properties, the report said.

“Absolutely nothing surprised me from the report,” said Tobin Leblanc Haley, spokesperson for NB Coalition for Tenants Rights. “We knew about the long vacancy between tendencies, we knew about the off-line units, we knew about the like deferred maintenance.”

“Anti poverty advocates, folks who live in public housing tenants, community providers who work with public housing tenants, have been saying what the report says for years… it’s good to see some of the knowledge that’s held in the community reflected in the auditor general’s report.” 

She said she thinks there is a willingness on the part of the government to spend some money to upgrade. 

“What I don’t see, and what I’m not seeing anywhere is that significant financial commitment to growing the non-market housing sector,” said Leblanc Haley. 

She said trying to cajole the nonprofit sector into doing more with the same amount of investment is not going to solve the problem, there needs to be massive public investment into public housing if we are truly going to solve the housing crisis.

HNB provided their 2025-26 budget for maintenance of public housing units: $34.7M for capital construction, $9.35M for capital improvements, and $59.4M in housing infrastructure.

“A total of $50,287,339.47 was spent from the corporation’s budget for Housing Infrastructure,” HNB said, disclosing the actual maintenance costs for public housing units in the 2024-24 fiscal year. “In addition, a total of $46.9M was spent on capital construction and $4.4M on capital improvements.”

Leblanc Haley said these are community resources and everyone does better when they are securely and affordably housed. 

Minister responsible for HNB David Hickey said public housing is chronically underfunded. 

“We’ve not built public housing in this province for 30 plus years, and we’ve done a really poor job of maintaining it during those years,” he said.” 

Hickey said the $2 million set aside in operational and maintenance costs has not kept up and the province has let public housing degrade to this point over a long period of time. 

Hickey said this government has known this was an issue since before they got elected and that is why he fought for the 18.6 per cent increase in provincial funding for housing. 

“The state of public housing in New Brunswick is very poor,” said premier Holt. 

“The sad reality of politics is it’s pretty difficult to put something in place that’s going to last for 10 years,” said Holt. She said the province is working hard to address the lack of funding to maintain public housing but said it will be very difficult to secure anything permanently to solve the issue. 

He said the strategy of the housing corporation is to make fundamental changes to the way the province operates its public housing units. These changes will be seen through ensuring maintenance is kept up with in a timely manner 

“What this report very clearly says, is that even getting into public housing means continuing to live in substandard and unsafe housing conditions.”

When asked about a delay in addressing work orders related to pests, Hickey said he was not surprised by the findings of the report. 

He said the province knows tenants of the provincial government in public housing often face worse conditions and that is what he is trying to solve through HNB. 

While Hickey did not answer directly how he will permanently secure the maintenance cost for public housing, he did affirm that he, along with HNB, will be working as long as they are in office to address housing issues.

Meanwhile, Leblanc Haley said there are two classes of tenants with different sets of entitlements under legislation. 

She said tenants in the private sector have lots of resources available to them to address complaints and maintenance issues but those resources are not available to those in public housing. 

“I don’t think because an auditor general’s report came out any of that is going to stop,” said Leblanc Haley.