HOUSINGAGAIN-L Housing Again Bulletin No 34

[Catherine Nasmith <cnasmith@sympatico.ca>]

HOUSING AGAIN - Bulletin Number 34
June 1, 2001

A twice monthly electronic bulletin published on what people are doing to
put housing back on the public agenda in Ontario, across Canada and around
the world. Our web site is http://www.housingagain.web.net.
If you have any tips for the Bulletin please e-mail: gallop@interlog.com.

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1. Waiting for the regulation.
2. Aggressive affordable housing plan for Waterloo.
3. Assembly of First Nations seek billions for housing.
4. FCM wants rental housing subsidies of $50,000 per unit.
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1. Waiting for the regulation.

Municipalities and affordable housing activists are still waiting to see
how the province will deliver on its promise to allow cities to give
favourable treatment to private companies which create rental housing.

The province announced on May 8 that it would enact a new regulation
that will amend the Municipal Act as a follow-up to recommendations from
its Housing Supply Working Group.

"Nobody has seen this regulation yet," said Noreen Dunphy, manager of
public affairs for the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association (ONPHA).
"But it is expected that municipalities wishing to use it will have to
approve their own by-law establishing affordable housing as a municipal
purpose. Then municipalities will have to individually set out the
criteria for defining affordable housing and what they are willing to
offer private sector companies as benefits - waiving fees or giving
grants, loans, land etc.

"What will be critical for community members to watch in their own
cities is that if private companies get significant benefits like
subsidies and land donations, that the criteria set out by municipal
governments is strong enough to ensure this new rental housing meets the
needs of lower-income people, and that truly affordable rents are
secured over a significant period of time."

Dunphy said that while ONPHA generally supports greater flexibility for
municipalities, it wants to stress the importance of recognizing that
non-profit associations provide permanent affordable housing because
they are not looking to make money in the long run from the benefits
that cities provide to them.

"This is a welcome move from the province to give municipalities added
tools to provide affordable housing but it gives cities the ability to
forgo revenues from a property tax base that is already struggling to
fund the existing social housing that was downloaded from the province,"
she said. 

"Surplus money and land is a diminishing resource for municipalities.
This move does not take the place of critical funding that is required
from federal and provincial governments to fund a significant volume of
affordable housing."

2. Aggressive affordable housing plan for Waterloo.

A rent bank and a commitment to new rental apartments constructed and
managed by the Region are just a couple of the ideas passed by Waterloo
Regional Council on May 16 as part of its new affordable housing strategy.

"We are very pleased to have a strategy passed by a council that is
taking a strong stand to get some housing built and show some leadership
in trying to get the other levels of government to get involved in
housing solutions," said Tim Welch, housing program administrator for
the Region. Welch works with Sybil Frenette, director of housing and
community services, who has a 15-year history of working with housing
issues in the area and who penned the recommendations for council.

The Waterloo region, which encompasses the cities of Waterloo, Cambridge
and Kitchener, has the third lowest rental vacancy rate in Canada at 0.7
per cent, behind Toronto's 0.6 per cent and Ottawa's 0.2 per cent.
Waterloo has 3,700 households on its waiting list for financial
assistance to obtain housing.

The region secured funding for the new strategy by putting savings from
lower interest rates on mortgages for its non-profit and co-op housing
stock into a reserve fund to maintain existing social housing and create
new affordable housing. The region's goal is to create 1,000 new
affordable units by 2005.

Recommendations include: having the Community Health Department do
pro-active, targeted building inspections and deal directly with
unhealthy living conditions that the report attributes to a
housing-stressed environment; an inventory of publicly owned lands and a
Housing First protocol for these properties; and an eviction prevention
program that may include a rent bank currently part of a pilot study. In
what the strategy calls its 'boldest' move, it also recommends that the
region use either its non-profit or its local housing corporation to act
as a developer for new affordable units. The report says explicitly,
"staff believe that 100 units built and operated by the Region on
several sites would be a tremendous show of continued leadership."

Other recommendations include: expansion of the Affordable Housing
Partnership Project at a rate of about 130 units per year for a total of
400 units;  this is in addition to the funding for 115 units to be built
by local non-profit housing providers,  already approved by Waterloo
last November, and a contribution to the anticipated federal capital
grant partnership in the form of a regionally funded rent supplement
program to ensure 100 supplemented units in existing market housing will
be affordable to the lowest income residents in the community; assist
housing providers working with money from mental health funding find units.

The full study is available at The full study is available at
http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/planning/housing/index.html.

3. Assembly of First Nations seek billions for housing.

The lack of sufficient housing for first nations people 'looms like a
social-concern skyscraper,' said national chief Matthew Coon Come at the
recent First Nations Housing Conference and Trade Show, held in Toronto.

Coon Come said that only 80,000 houses exist for the 750,000 aboriginal
people across Canada and that many of those dwellings are unsafe.

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is preparing to announce the release
of a report later very soon. Officials at the AFN could not be reached
for further comment before the Bulletin's deadline.

A proposal posted on the organization's Web site says the AFN is looking
for approval from the Treasury Board for $7.7 billion over a five-year
period to assist communities in implementing a First Nations Housing
agenda. It says that a lack of access to resources and inconsistency in
their application have limited the capacity of First Nations people to
create and maintain safe and healthy communities. The money would be
part of a strategy for native people to gain self-determination in the
housing and infrastructure fields. Out of this strategy would come, not
only the means to build proper housing capacity but strategies to build
technological competencies at the community level, create an economic
base in local communities and maintain cultural sensitivity throughout
the housing and infrastructure upgrading process.

For more information, visit the AFN Housing Secretariat Web site at
http://www.afn.ca/Programs/Housing/HS/new_page_4.htm. 

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4. FCM wants rental housing subsidies of $50,000 per unit.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) has released its
position on the proposed federal affordable rental-housing program. The
much-anticipated program is yet to be announced.

The FCM is calling on the federal government to give $50,000 per unit to
20,000 units per year to make them affordable enough to house lower
income people who can't afford market rents. If funds are limited to the
total amount announced in the federal Liberal Party's  'Red Book' which
formed the basis of the last election campaign, FCM says that $50,000
should still be allocated to each unit, even though not as many units
can be funded, to ensure that the units funded are truly affordable. 

And in other FCM news, Toronto City Councillor Jack Layton has been
elected President of the national municipal body. Layton is a long-time
housing advocate and has been leading the FCM's vigorous housing
campaign in recent years." Congratulations Jack.

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