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We are a group of nearly 500 passionate team members dedicated to building, developing, and managing homes for more than 13,000 Canadian households.
As community builders, we provide high quality homes and customer care to a diverse resident base ranging from students to families, to young professionals and seniors. We take great pride in catering to our tenants’ evolving needs and strive to have a positive impact in our communities.
We are passionate about implementing sustainable projects and our objective is to pursue initiatives to reduce our environmental impacts. These initiatives benefit our residents, provide development opportunities for our teams and help to safeguard our environment through lower energy consumption, better water and waste management, and reduced GHG emissions.
Our objective is to offer an unsurpassed resident experience in a culture where we value our differences and where everyone feels included and heard, creating a strong sense of belonging. Our goal is to offer a learning environment that supports our team members in their personal development. We believe that dealing with people is the heart of any business, and this is especially true in the multi-family sector since our business impacts someone’s home.
To maintain the confidence of investors and properly oversee the activities of management, adopting and upholding high standards of governance practices are essential. Our governance system is built on corporate ethics, transparency, compliance, and discipline with the objective of providing timely, accurate, and complete disclosure of all material information to the public.
We strive to consider five broad stakeholder groups in all business decisions and policies – our residents, our team, our communities, our vendors and our investors.
At InterRent, our robust governance structure and policies are available on our website.
At InterRent, our commitment to sustainability is driven by our belief to act responsibly for our future generations and treating each other fairly. This commitment, outlined in our Sustainability Policy is overseen by our Board, and upheld by each team member across the entire company, from acquisitions and asset management to talent management and resident engagement.
More than 13,000 households in Canada call an InterRent community their home and so our residents' satisfaction is paramount to our success.
Our team is the lifeblood of the company. We believe that an engaged team is energized, positive, and focused on delivering on our business strategy.
We believe it’s crucial to keep an ongoing and transparent dialogue with the investment community so that we have the financial flexibility to execute on our business strategy.
We believe our role extends beyond the walls of our properties to the communities in which we operate. It is critical that the community organizations and agencies in our regions can count on us as a partner, both financially and with our time.
Environmental management and pushing to be better is core to who we are. We have been rolling out green initiatives for more than a decade and you can expect continued improvements in our environment performance in the years ahead.
We continually search for ways to reduce energy consumption in our portfolio and increase the share of renewables in our energy mix. For example, almost 100% of our communities have high efficiency boilers and the majority of our suites are equipped with Energy Star® appliances.
Water is a precious resource that must be managed, and we do so by installing many water-saving measures in our buildings. For example, more than 90% of our suites have low-flow toilets and the majority of our portfolio has water-saving fixtures.
In 2022, our waste data coverage improved to 34.2% from 16.4% from the previous year, corresponding to 2,444 tons of non-hazardous waste. It is a challenge to collect waste and recycling data in multi-family communities; however, this topic continues to be a focus for us.
As a REIT with 100% Canadian exposure, we believe it is imperative to track our emissions and take action to drive GHG reduction in support of Canada’s climate goals.
Our latest development, The Slayte, is a prime example of adaptive reuse in action. This project provided an opportunity to repurpose an aging government office building into additional homes, exceeding today’s energy efficiency and waste diversion standards.
By reusing the structure, it is estimated that 4,575 metric tons of carbon was diverted, translating to a 55% savings in carbon compared to a typical new build.
This is equivalent to:
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous office buildings in downtown areas across the country have been left with high vacancies. According to Colliers Canada, the national office vacancy rate stands at 13.3%, with downtown areas being particularly affected at 14.7% as of the first quarter of 2023. This is a significant increase from the pre-pandemic vacancy rate of roughly 8% three years ago.
By repurposing existing structures, adaptive reuse projects breathe new life into underutilized buildings and transforms the building itself, and the surrounding community into vibrant spaces. At InterRent, we recognize the significance of these projects as a unique and sustainable solution to reinvigorate communities, while providing much needed additional housing for Canadians.
The property scored in all three criteria of the MLI Select Program: 1 energy efficiency, 2 accessibility and 3 affordability to qualify for MLI Select level 1.
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When faced with having to dig up the pavement in our parking areas at Parkway Park to replace broken underground wiring, we pivoted to install solar lights and were able to keep our paved lots intact, minimize disruption to our residents, and bring a renewable source into our energy mix. Due to this successful test project, we expanded installation to the Forest Ridge properties.
With the help of our partner, MicroHabitat, we turned an unused portion of our roof at Appartements VIE in Montreal into a thriving urban garden, helping to reconnect people to nature. The 300-pound seasonal harvest was donated on a weekly basis to our community partner, Chez Doris, to support their daily meal program.
We added a micro cogeneration unit to our Ottawa community, LIV, which produces heat and electrical power simultaneously through high efficiency heat and power generation. At LIV, this translates to a 17% offset in electrical consumption from the grid and a 20% reduction in domestic hot water production from boilers, leading to $25,000 in annual savings.
We are currently testing this at communities in Montreal, Ottawa, and Burlington to solve the problem of package deliveries piling up in lobbies. Through this system, parcel couriers are provided with timed access to a secure package/lockers room and residents are notified electronically that a package is waiting for pick-up, thus providing a convenient, secure and organized package delivery system for our resident base.
We partnered with Enbridge Gas to install building automation system (BAS) upgrades at our Lakeshore Club community in Burlington. The project generates 38,200m3 in annual natural gas savings, a 40% reduction from pre-project levels, leading to cost savings and enhanced building operational control for our
facilities team, while ensuring continued resident comfort.
We installed this well to tap into ground water for our lawn irrigation and to water plants and flowers around the community rather than pulling from the municipal water supply. The project generates financial savings of about $15,000 each year and we estimate annual water savings of 2,670m3 – the equivalent of one Olympic sized swimming pool.
We are proud supporters of electric vehicles, which have proven to help reduce GHG emissions and pollution. In 2022, InterRent had 31 onsite EV charging stations at 16 of our bigger communities, making EV charging accessible to 20% of our total suites.
We will continue to expand EV charging coverage at our buildings in the coming years to encourage our residents to embrace electric transportation and reduce their carbon footprint.
Building Certification is an example of our commitment to green building practices and environmental stewardship. InterRent is pursuing the Canadian Certified Rental Building Program (CRB) and have established an agreement as at the end of 2022. We are actively working towards getting our first group of buildings certified in 2023.
Through acquisition, we now own and manage a LEED® Gold certified building located in Vancouver.
In 2020, we installed Building Automation System (BAS) at five of our communities in Stoney Creek. Encouraged with the results, we further implemented BAS systems in 39 buildings last year, which included adding outdoor air reset to boilers, reducing supply and return water temperatures and more, bringing our total number of buildings with BAS to 44 and covering 28% of our total suites. In 2023, BAS will remain a key focus of our operational efforts as it enables us to leverage technology to achieve cost savings, enhance resident comfort, and gain smarter operational control for our facilities team.
We continued to implement the state-of-the-art 1Valet Smart Building Platform across our communities. In 2022, we deployed the system in 40 of our buildings, bringing the total to 48 and covering over 30% of our portfolio. This platform incorporates advanced technology solutions such as Automated Entry System and Integration with 3rd party
devices such as Parcel Lockers that enhance security and streamline communication within our buildings, enabling us to improve operational efficiencies and enhance the safety and convenience for our residents.
In 2022, we piloted an organic waste collection program at three of our buildings in the greater Montreal area as part of our commitment to sustainable and responsible waste management. Organic waste at these locations is separated and collected, transported to local composting facilities, where they turn into nutrient-rich compost that benefits our ecosystem. We plan to expand the organic waste collection program to a total of 19 communities in the Greater Montreal Area by the end of this summer, while the program is already accessible to all our communities in Vancouver.
* In 2020, energy consumption reflects data for which InterRent received and paid bills and excluded any resident accounts that were separately metered. In 2021, data coverage improved as we moved closer toward collecting whole-building data.
1 In 2020, emissions reflect data for which InterRent received and paid bills and excluded any resident accounts that were separately metered. In 2021, data coverage improved as we moved closer toward collecting whole-building data.
Performance metrics
SOCIAL
We provide homes. That is a responsibility that we take very seriously, and it anchors our engagement efforts. Collaboration with all of our stakeholders helped us identify the material social metrics for our business, including how to manage them and how to measure our performance.