Alliance upset with council

By Frank Matys Barrie Advance Apr 19, 2012
 ORILLIA – The Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness is voicing concern over what it says is council’s inaction on affordable housing.
 “It just looks at this point in time as if, slowly but surely they are backing away from this,” said Joyce Ward, chair of the alliance’s Orillia chapter.
She said the issue has been relegated to the backburner, citing a lack of staff resources as a major concern.
 “It is a very loose and indefinite commitment of time,” she said.
 Ward said the alliance “started out with high hopes” when the previous council seconded senior planner Jill Lewis to the position of affordable housing coordinator.
 When the current council narrowed the number of recommendations in the city’s affordable housing action plan, the secondment ended.
 Lewis is meant to juggle the housing issue with her regular duties.
 Ward attended a meeting of the housing committee in late March, at which time she said she learned that “work on affordable housing initiatives will be postponed for an indefinite period” due to more pressing priorities.
 “They are finding they don’t have the resources to deal with affordable housing, which we think is so critical,” she added.
 Planning director Ian Sugden said that Lewis continues to work on the file, but added that “it is just one of many things that she works on in her role as senior planner.”
 Time-sensitive planning matters “get priority,” he said.
 “The things without mandatory time frames get a lower priority,” he said, adding that affordable housing has been placed “on a lower priority so that other things can get addressed. In order to make sure they don’t always end up on the bottom of the pile, we are controlling her workload so that they will get to the top of the pile.”
Coun. Paul Spears, a member of the housing committee, said the lack of municipal staff on the affordable housing file is a concern.
 “This is just almost sort of a sideline now,” he said.
Aside from the effort to encourage home ownership, “nothing else seems to be moving too far,” he said.
 Of the half-dozen affordable housing recommendations made by the current council, just one – a proposal to establish a home ownership program – represents “a bow to affordable housing,” Ward said.
 However, “it doesn’t really address the needs of the low income groups that are having trouble paying rents at market rates,” she added. “It really wasn’t a solution that we clearly cheered on, but it was something to look at.”
 Ward is seeing little support on council for affordable housing.
 “There are some that will acknowledge that more needs to be done, but they are not making the commitment that they will do it,” she added.
 Andrew Hill, one of two councillors on the housing committee, said council is focusing on projects that encourage home ownership.
“Personally, I don’t want to burden the taxpayer (by giving affordable housing developers) tax holidays or waiving of development fees,” he said.
Council recently agreed to a 10-year deferral of development charges for the Options For Homes project, which aims to put home ownership within reach of families with incomes as low as $40,000.
“Those development fees will be paid when the house is sold, or after the 10 years,” Hill added.
Spears said greater focus should be placed on providing housing for those who can’t afford to purchase.
 “We should be putting money into a reserve fund to provide some assistance to community organizations that want to get into affordable housing,” he said.
Spears noted the housing committee remains one council member short following the death of Don Jenkins.
 “We’re sort of in a … vacuum until we get the full committee together and decide what approach we’re going to take,” he said.