Bennett, Therrien debate housing solutions
Mayor says city has done its best but can’t keep up with demand
Mayor Daryl Bennett said the city has “done its best” to build affordable apartments in Peterborough, but still can’t keep up with demand because people who can’t afford homes elsewhere move to Peterborough looking for inexpensive housing.
“We are attracting people to this community who are looking for housing — and can’t find it in other areas,” he said.
The comment was made on a live debate on YourTV on Wednesday night between the two mayoral candidates.
Bennett, 70, has been mayor for eight years and is running for re-election against Diane Therrien, 32, who has been a councillor in Town Ward for four years.
The candidates had been asked what they would do to alleviate the housing crisis; apartment vacancy rates have been stuck at one per cent for quite some time.
“The long-term solution is a National Housing Program,” Bennett said. “Anything we (city council) do is built on the backs of citizens.”
But Therrien pointed out that the National Housing Program has been in place since May — and through it, the federal government has made $40 billion available for communities.
Therrien asked Bennett why the city apparently hasn’t accessed any of that money yet and why the mayor didn’t attend either of the recent workshops in Peterborough where politicians and housing advocates were offered information about how to apply for grants.
“The mayor was well-versed on what the programs were about,” Bennett said.
He also said the city needs a partner with land to team up and apply for the money: “We don’t have the land mass to contribute,” he said, meaning the city. Therrien had a different take. When creating new developments, she said, she wants to see “mixed-use and mixed-density” housing, or perhaps use innovating approaches like asking developers to build apartments over strip malls.
She also said she’d lobby upper levels of government for funding, since there is such dire need in the city: people working full-time are nonetheless poor, she said, and students are sometimes living in U-Hauls for lack of apartments. “That’s not acceptable,” she said.
The candidates were asked a variety of questions in the 90-minute debate — Why do we need (or not need) The Parkway, for example (Bennett: “Have you driven in Peterborough lately?”; Therrien: “Economically and environmentally — it’s something we can’t afford.”)
They also talked about Bennett’s promise, earlier in the campaign, to have police crack down on “drug-related activity” downtown.
“The problems that face the downtown community are deep and vast. It’s not going to be an easy cleanup, but we have to start somewhere,” he said.
Bennett also said he wants to see some laws changed so “they have teeth.”
There were 102 deaths due to opioid overdoses in the last year, Bennett said — and he said it’s because people are taking drug laced with fatal substances.
“From people who weren’t taking what they thought they were…. That’s a manslaughter charge, as far as I’m concerned,” Bennett said.
But Therrien mentioned the use of opioids is not confined to marginalized people.
“This isn’t a problem just hurting low-income people…. Some are just using recreational drugs, and they don’t know what’s in them,” she said.
Therrien also said the city needs further drug rehab services — that we’re not well-served by for-profit methadone clinics, which she called “a Band-Aid solution.”
When it came to city taxes, Bennett asked Therrien whether she knows the formula for calculation of tax levy — the one used by city staff to figure out the cost of individual tax bills.
Therrien said there are a variety of different tax rates arrived at for each home, but she didn’t explain the mathematical formula.
Meanwhile Bennett could expound on the mathematical formula without thinking twice.
“I took an interest in that when I was first elected, eight years ago,” he said.
There will be a debate just for Town Ward candidates at The Venue on Thursday at 6 p.m.
The municipal election is Oct. 22.