The Housing Supply Challenge is a federal funding competition led by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). It will award $300 million over five years to identify and scale innovative solutions that remove or reduce barriers to housing supply across Canada. The program supports a range of solution types — from process improvements and data tools to new approaches for planning, approvals, and community-led development — and encourages collaboration across sectors and regions.
The Challenge is open to a broad group of applicants, including for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, Indigenous organizations, post-secondary institutions, governments, and multi-partner teams.
How the Challenge Addresses Housing Supply
Each round of the Challenge targets a specific barrier — such as access to land data, pre-development processes, or northern and rural project readiness — with funding provided to help participants refine, test, and implement their solutions.
Rather than funding research alone, the Challenge is designed to:
Encourage collaboration and partnerships
Support community engagement and practical implementation
Enable ideas that can be adapted or scaled nationally
The core goal is straightforward: Remove obstacles so more homes can get built.
GroundBreak’s Role (Level-Up Round)
GroundBreak Ventures served as a scale-up advisory partner for the Level-Up round of the Housing Supply Challenge — supporting semi-finalists as they advanced early solutions toward deployment.
We provide:
Expert mentorship and business coaching
Peer-to-peer support and curated connections across the housing ecosystem
Scaling assistance, including market readiness, sales and marketing strategy, operational support, and commercialization guidance
Through our support, innovators were able to:
Accelerate pilot and prototype phases
Refine their business models and solution design
Strengthen implementation readiness
Move closer to large-scale adoption and impact
In total, we worked with 18 innovators across Canada who are driving solutions that have the potential to:
Speed up homebuilding
Expand overall housing supply
Scale new approaches across the housing ecosystem