Ottawa Community Housing finds ways to trim deferred repair bill
‘Aggressive strategies’ include getting exemption on paying education tax
There will always be fixes needed at the properties owned by Ottawa Community Housing, but the city’s social housing agency has succeeded in decreasing its huge deferred maintenance bill.
Stéphane Giguère, the housing agency’s CEO, said Friday the value of the deferred maintenance is $140 million.
“If we look at the improvement, we went from initially close to $200 million, to two or three years ago $180 million; now we’re down to $140 million,” Giguère said Friday.
He said OCH has used more “aggressive strategies” to free up money, such as asking the city for an exemption on paying education taxes on its property tax bill, which has saved the housing agency $3 million annually.
The agency invested the savings in repairs.
Re-mortgaging properties has also helped OCH find some savings to put toward repairs, Giguère said.
The decrease is a significant improvement from seven years ago, when a condition assessment of the housing stock estimated the value of deferred maintenance at $332.5 million.
Giguère, along with housing staff, tenants and council members, were at an OCH apartment building at 800 St. Laurent Blvd. to announce the agency’s $20-million capital program for 2016.
There are roughly 220 projects across the portfolio, including one that’s currently replacing railings and balconies at the St. Laurent. building.
Rideau-Vanier Coun. Mathieu Fleury, chair of the OCH board of directors, said that in some cases tenants are temporarily relocated to a different unit so work can be done.
The largest project for OCH this year is at 380 Murray St.
The apartment complex is getting a facelift to balconies, the parking garage, stairwells, plumbing and sprinkler systems, the emergency generator and landscaping.
Giguère said OCH has been assessing when it’s time to sell units and build new ones, rather than spending money on costly repairs.
“We don’t want to put bad money after good investments,” Giguère said.
Mayor Jim Watson credited OCH for keeping up the “battle against the backlog of renovations.”
OCH has 15,000 units in its portfolio. The housing stock has an average age of 45 years.