Make Herongate housing affordable
Re: Here’s how we’ll produce a solid plan for Heron Gate, April 14.
In the winter of 2016, Timbercreek evicted hundreds of low-income people and families from 80 townhouses in Herongate to make way for “resort-style apartments.”
Herongate has the highest rate of core housing need in the city. Why are we letting some of the last affordable townhouses in the city be demolished in the most vulnerable neighbourhood?
Coun. Jean Cloutier is supporting the destruction of decent, affordable housing. Many of the residents are new immigrants and face countless hurdles in establishing themselves. Having to face homelessness because your home gets destroyed by the developer only further entrenches the cycle of poverty.
No company spends $200 million without a 10year plan. Since the sale of the 22-hectare property, home to 4,000 people, in 2007, it has been run into the ground through purposeful neglect. Once the homes became dilapidated and infested with bugs and mould, the developers could claim they were engaged in “revitalization” and “community building.”
In the 1980s in Montreal, CMHC undertook the largest housing renovation project in Canada’s history. After a developer employed the same tactics we now see in Herongate, the residents of Milton-Parc fought and won. The land and housing are now in the hands of the community and it is a familyfriendly, affordable and vibrant neighbourhood.
Our group, Heatherington Land Trust, wants to ensure that housing stays permanently affordable and that any new capital pumped into Heatherington-Herongate benefits the people who currently live here.
This is why HLT is fighting for community ownership of a vacant lot in our neighbourhood. This would ensure housing remains permanently affordable to low-income people.
A community land trust is an advanced solution to addressing the needs of our citizens and would put Ottawa on the international map. It’s time we get serious about housing.
Josh Hawley, facilitator with Heatherington Land Trust, www.heatheringtonlandtrust.ca