Cash sought for affordable housing
Edmonton passed a new affordable housing strategy Tuesday. Now it just needs the cash.
The city’s plan is to redevelop the aging townhouse and apartment sites scattered throughout its 1970s neighbourhoods with a higher density mix of both market and low-income housing. It’s a plan modelled after Toronto’s Regent Park, a projects that is rebuilding more than 2,000 subsidized units and using 5,400 market-rate units to off-set the cost.
A four-building site in Londonderry, whose 80 units have now been deemed unfit for human habitation, is first on the list to be redeveloped as a pilot project. The site is on 72nd Street just north of 144th Avenue.
The department is asking for $990,000 in the next city budget to start planning and to demolish the current structures, said Jay Freeman, director of housing and homelessness for the city. Councillors voted to lobby Ottawa and the province for design dollars, too.
“The land is there; it’s close to services. Let’s pull down the poorly designed, inefficient units ... and let’s redevelop something on the site with more density,” said Iveson, suggesting it could also have a daycare or convenience store to benefit the whole community. “We want to do a pilot and if we can prove it out, we can duplicate it over and over again on some of these older sites.”
The Capital Region Housing Corp., which manages the largest stock of deeply-subsidized units, has 128 sites throughout the city. Some are in great locations for redevelopment, close to parks, schools and public transit, said Freeman. The city owns most of the land they’re built on, and may sell off some sites to fund redevelopment for the others.
He estimates a site needs to have at least three market units for every subsidized unit to make the social enterprise model work without an ongoing subsidy. The projects will need upfront capital dollars.
The affordable housing strategy also proposes to create a “centre of excellence” at the city to encourage the 121 organizations involved in the industry to share best practices.
Edmonton’s homeless numbers are rising and Statistics Canada surveys found 47,000 renters in Edmonton are living in “core housing need,” either in crowded conditions or in a home they can’t afford, one on which they spend more than one third of their income.
The waiting list at the Capital Region Housing Corp. has grown to 3,800, said executive director Greg Dewling. That’s up from 2,100 households last April.
On Tuesday, the province set aside $25 million for redeveloping social housing sites in Alberta, said Dewling. “That’s a good start,” he said. “The gut feeling I’m getting is that we will see investments over time, once there’s a plan in place.”