By Cecilia Nasmith
Cobourg council received a report at this week's committee-of-the-whole meeting on the implementation plan for the Affordable and Rental Housing Community Improvement Plan that will be initiated during this budget year.
“The CIP is intended to align with council's strategy for aligning with the county's Affordable Housing Strategy,” Director of Planning and Development Glenn McGlashon said.
“The intent is to target a number of defined focus areas for creating purpose-built housing and second units.”
This budget year, $250,000 was set aside from the Affordable Housing Reserve. With grants so far disbursed to Trinity Housing and the Elgin Park redevelopment, $162,000 remains. This will be allocated based on a number of criteria such as level of affordability, longevity of affordability and target markets.
“The county also has an affordable-housing stimulus program, a capital-grant program they approved last week - $1-million toward incentives for affordable housing throughout the county over the coming years,” McGlashon said.
Cobourg's program and Northumberland County's are stackable, he noted, and can go far toward leveraging additional provincial and Federal funding that may become available.
The county's $1-million is made available with the hope that it will result in approximately 50 affordable units.
“That gives you some perspective on how much money it takes to actually provide affordable housing units in the community,” McGlashon said.
“Hopefully there will be larger projects involved, but certainly there's no aversion to having a number of smaller projects like second units and infill projects.”
The report proposed an ad hoc committee made up of the Co-ordinator of Planning and Development Services, a member of the Planning and Development Advisory Committee, a member of the Northumberland Affordable Housing Committee, the Director of Corporate Services (or a designate), McGlashon (or a designate) and the Northumberland County Housing Services Manager (or a designate), with other technical staff support being made available as a resource as needed.
Nevertheless, he said, “council retains full authority to approve or reject any proposal that comes before them.
“It's important to have data collection and monitor programs and performance outcomes. These would be reported back to council on an annual basis.”
Councillor Brian Darling was amazed at how many municipal staff members will be involved, and asked if their hours working on the CIP will be tracked.
“I think that is something we will definitely monitor and keep track of with this plan,” McGlashon agreed.
Mayor John Henderson said the county had allocated the $1-million from the county housing reserve because it was determined that there was a need for this kind of support. There will be two kinds of applications, he said – one for projects with four or fewer units, and one for projects with more than four units.
