Low-cost homes shuttered over shoddy upkeep
Mayor blames province for loss of 245 units, wants funding for repair
The province is shirking its role of maintaining affordable housing in Calgary, leading to hundreds of rundown units being shuttered, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Wednesday.
Between April and December 2017, city officials were forced to close 245 provincially owned but city-managed units after they’d been vacated due to deteriorating conditions.
Nenshi called that intolerable, while noting the city is seeking to nearly double the operational grant for the housing from the province — from $12 million to $22 million for 2018 — to repair that housing stock.
“Successive provincial governments of different stripes haven’t been funding this maintenance and it’s gotten to an absolute breaking point,” said Nenshi.
“We’re not talking about cracked linoleum, we’re actually talking about health and safety concerns.”
Last month, the province provided a $4.5-million emergency infusion for renovations, but Nenshi said more is needed — and on a more reliable basis.
He noted Calgary’s unfulfilled 10-year effort to eliminate homelessness by this year and said progress toward that goal will never be made if more low-cost housing units are being shut than are being opened.
“That is absolutely the danger and nobody wants that . . . we’ve had great, great success (in fighting homelessness) but the area we’ve had problems with is in affordable housing,” he said.
Nenshi said it’s not hard to distinguish between buildings maintained by the city and the decrepit housing under provincial upkeep.
“There’s such a contrast between these provincial housing units versus other city facilities,” he said.
The Calgary Housing Company, which operates much of the lowercost lodging, has a waiting list of nearly 4,000.
During a meeting Wednesday of the city’s intergovernmental affairs committee, the province also came in for praise for its focus on promoting inclusive housing, or planning that ensures low income or subsidized lodging is included in residential development.
Nenshi also said the province, along with Ottawa, have recently launched much-welcome and long-overdue affordable housing strategies aimed at municipalities that he called “historic.”
But the mayor said they need to see the fruits of that strategy to ensure existing affordable housing is maintained, and more supply added.
“The money’s got to flow and the shovels have to get in the ground,” he said.
The city is also hoping to see $70 million over the next decade from the province to build new belowmarket housing.
In a statement, Alberta Seniors and Housing Minister Lori Sigurdson said the province is considering the city’s funding request ahead of a provincial budget expected in March, and reiterated the $4.5 million in recent support.
But she also blamed the previous PC government for allowing the housing stock to deteriorate.
“The former government left a $1-billion maintenance deficit in affordable housing,” she stated.
“Mayor Nenshi and I are in contact and both levels of government are committed to ensuring Calgarians who depend on affordable housing receive the supports they need.”
A Calgary Housing Company report said, for now, $6.9 million in funding has been committed to “support 2,000 units of affordable housing,” which will also help the city leverage more money from governments to build more such lodging.