City to spend $21 million on new affordable housing, Some councillors say rent help, repairs are needed more

Posted Jan 26, 2012 By Laura Mueller

EMC news - The city - not the federal government - is in the best position to decide whether $26 million should be used on building new affordable housing, or maintaining and operating existing housing, according to the city's planning committee.

Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley was successful in asking the committee to stand up to the federal and provincial governments' rules for how new funding under the Investment in Affordable Housing for Ontario Program (IAH) should be spent.

The City of Ottawa has been allocated $26 million over the next four years through IAH, which replaces the former Canada-Ontario Affordable Housing Program.

But the new program puts limits on how much of that money can be spent on the cost of running and maintaining the city's existing housing stock, so city staff recommended spending the majority of the money, $21.3 million, be spent on building or buying new affordable rental and supportive housing.

That didn't sit well with Hubley, who said the city needs more say over how it addresses the problem of the need for affordable housing.

"We need to have that flexibility in the future," said Hubley. "The city needs the ability to move the money around in whatever best way to serve the people who need affordable housing."

But the city's hands are tied, according to a staff report, because it can't shift money around between capital building funds and operating costs once it makes a decision on how it plans to spend the money.

Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Steve Desroches, the chair of Ottawa Community Housing, backed up Hubley's point, saying that he would like to see more flexibility so the city could tailor the fund to meet local needs.

RENEWAL NEEDED

"At OCH we have a long list of maintenance needs and at some point we are going to have to focus very heavily on renewal," Desroches said, noting that it would be nice to be able to shift money to cover the operational costs of doing that, if the city chose.

According to the staff report, "New units will create new affordable, accessible, sustainable, long term rental housing infrastructure with a focus on households and individuals with the longest wait times, and those requiring supports or accessible units."

Spending the money on new affordable housing should create more than 200 units within that four-year window, according to a report by city staff. The need for those new units outweighs the desire for more operating funds because Ottawa has very little unoccupied rental housing available, at a vacancy rate of 1.4 per cent, Ottawa has one of the lowest vacancy levels in the country. On top of that, rent increased by 3.7 per cent - more than the cost of living - between 2009 and 2010.

The low vacancy rate is also a reason to avoid trying to invest too much money in rent supplements, which the city can give out to people to allow them to stay in private rental housing - usually, their current homes. Since there are fewer apartments available in Ottawa, the city is already seeing a slow uptake of the rental supplement program it introduced last year through its new, annual $14 million housing and homelessness program. Putting more money into that pot is a risk because if the funds aren't doled out at the end of each year, the provincial and federal governments would take that money back.

John Dickie of the Eastern Ontario Landlord Association said EOLO has long argued that government monies are better spent on subsidizing existing housing and argued that the city could put around $10 million of its $26 million into operating funds, particularly to help convert existing housing stock to meet changing needs (such as accessibility and larger families).

"Why build when we can renovate and move the current stock to what the market needs?" Dickie asked the planning committee.

With files from Blair Edwards

laura.mueller@metroland.com