Lack of social housing for single adults stressing Housing Authority
GREAT NEED FOR ONE-BEDROOM AND BACHELOR SUITES
The city has no social housing for single adults with no dependents and it is causing a significant strain on the Lethbridge Housing Authority.
“Lethbridge needs Rent Geared to Income (Social) housing,” said LHA CAO Robin James during Lethbridge City Council’s regular meeting on Monday.
“Primarily one-bedroom and bachelor suites.”
James spoke about the need for social housing for singles — over 18 with no dependants. Because there is no social housing available to them, LHA has been using rent supplement dollars to place these people in homes owned by private landowners.
Seventy per cent of the LHA rent supplement budget is going to single individuals or couples without dependants who are waiting for rent supplements and 67 per cent, nearly 300 clients, are on rent supplement with no dependants. There are also 130 non-seniors in the seniors complex who are between the ages of 50 and 60.
The LHA plan is to get the province to sign off on some provincial-owned land to develop fully accessible seniors housing.
A downtown high rise would then be re-purposed for singles housing. Currently, two buildings are available — one containing 136 units and another containing 142 units.
Depending on what is available in terms of land, LHA could build between 60 and 80 fully accessible units for seniors.
James noted the issue has been ongoing for years, and LHA has come to a point where too many resources in the rent supplement program are being spent trying to fix the issue.
“We really need to make sure we can help as many people as we can in our community,” she said. “In order to do that, we need to have social housing available for people without dependants so we can free up some of our rent supplement budget to assist other clients in need.”
She said that need has grown with the implementation of additional supports, but the amounts available are sometimes very low — meaning to secure housing, the recipients need a large subsidy.
“We had an individual apply who was only on CPP disability,” James said. “That person’s income was just shy of $550 per month. So without social housing, that person would end up in homelessness.”