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Canada Housing Benefit: Rent Help Through Your Province, and the Ended $500 Top-Up

Updated

The Canada Housing Benefit helps people with low incomes pay rent. The federal government funds it jointly with the provinces and territories, which each run their own version and pay households directly, usually monthly. There’s no federal application: you apply to your province or territory. This page explains how the benefit is set up and where to apply, and covers the one-time federal top-up that has ended. Other programs are in the benefits guide.

How the Canada Housing Benefit works

  • Funding: $2 billion in federal funding over 8 years to 2027-28, cost-matched by the provinces and territories.
  • Delivery: each province and territory designs its own benefit for local housing needs, under an agreement with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
  • Payments: made monthly, directly to households.
  • Who it’s for: households in housing need, such as low-income renters paying a large share of their income on rent. Each program sets its own income limits and amounts.

Source: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Evaluation of the Canada Housing Benefit.

Where to apply

Contact your provincial or territorial housing ministry or agency, or your municipal housing office, and ask about the Canada Housing Benefit or its local name. In Ontario, for example, it’s the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit. CMHC lists every federal-provincial-territorial housing agreement, including each province’s housing benefit.

Some provinces also run separate rent programs that aren’t part of the Canada Housing Benefit. If you’re on social assistance, your caseworker can tell you what you’re eligible for; see Ontario Works for Ontario.

The one-time $500 top-up (ended)

The federal government also paid a one-time top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit of $500. Finance Canada estimated that about 1.8 million renters would be eligible; CRA received 815,190 applications and paid about $402 million in total, according to its application statistics as of June 7, 2023. It was separate from the provincial benefits and has ended; you can’t apply for it now. It went to renters who:

  • were at least 15
  • had filed their previous year’s tax return and were resident in Canada for tax purposes
  • had an adjusted family net income of $35,000 or less for a family or $20,000 or less for an individual
  • paid at least 30% of their adjusted family net income on rent for their principal residence

Other help with housing costs

Sources

The figures and rules on this page come from these sources, last checked against them on October 7, 2026. How we check facts.