The City of Red Deer may need its own housing foundation to meet the long-term needs of people difficult to house, says a city councillor.
Gail Parks is calling for a made-in-Red Deer solution that includes setting up a Red Deer Housing Foundation. She will bring forward a motion to city council on May 17.
“I really feel we need a long-term solution for the hard-to-house and affordable housing,” said Parks.
Last June, the federal and provincial governments announced a two-year plan to invest $386 million to the Canada-Alberta Housing Program, a program to increase affordable housing units in Alberta. These investments build upon Ottawa’s $1.9-billion commitment in September 2008 for housing and homelessness programs across Canada.
Parks said these government dollars are funnelled into housing that is privately owned.
“What I would hope the foundation would do is actually take ownership eventually of housing and that would secure housing into the future for the homeless,” she said.
The city has entered into long-term contracts for up to 25 years with Stan Schalk and Peter Leyen of Potter’s Hands Developments to develop affordable housing units.
Parks said these developers stepped up to the plate when no one else did.
But she is concerned with what will happen with those units when those contracts end. For instance, the contract for the Buffalo Hotel, an old hotel downtown converted into affordable housing suites, runs out in about 15 years.
“What secures the private affordable housing in the future?”
A public foundation would offer that security, she said.
Private developers should be able to build affordable housing, she added.
“I want to examine alternatives.”
Parks said her motion isn’t about the developers, but it’s about the city looking to the future to provide housing for the homeless beyond these long-term contracts.
Schalk stressed he’s in the business of building affordable housing. The units are built small and with simplicity so that minimum rent can be charged.
“We’re not building to sell them,” he said. “I know there are people who are building and just waiting for those 20 years to go, so they can flip them . . . we are committed to building affordable housing and have been doing so for more than 10 years.”
Mayor Morris Flewwelling, who started the Mayor’s Task Force to End Homelessness in 2004, said there’s no guarantee private owners would continue with the affordable rent rate.
There seems to be no long-term plan to keep affordable housing being built now as affordable housing, he added.
“Even the help from the provincial and the federal governments isn’t visionary enough to include that,” Flewwelling said. “They’re still selling the idea of get it built quick.”
The city has a Community Housing Advisory committee — made up of two members of council, six citizens-at-large and two aboriginal representatives — that reviews and recommends funding requests from agencies, organizations, businesses and individuals. Dollars are provided from the provincial and federal governments.
Parks said she’s not sure how a housing foundation would operate, but added it’s not her intent for the Community Housing Advisory committee to be eliminated.
She said the advisory committee would still have to look at programming needs.
“If the city forms a foundation, where it can provide housing in the future, then of course that’s what would happen,” said Parks, regarding where provincial and federal dollars would go. “Capital dollars to build or provide housing in the future would come from that money.”
The foundation could build up a reserve so it could buy housing that would ultimately be secured.
She said the last allotment of provincial and federal dollars, approved by city council on the recommendation of the Community Housing Advisory committee, went to staff salaries at the Buffalo.
“We should take some of those dollars and try to provide a future for the homeless community, with public dollars for public housing — not private housing,” Parks said.
ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com