Did you know that we currently have 40,000 households living in poverty in Ottawa but only 25,000 affordable housing options?
As a City we have accomplished a lot over the past year to advance our affordable housing portfolio, but as always the hard work is never over.
That is why last Thursday at the Community and Protective Services Committee, I was pleased to move a motion that would help reconfirm our commitment to affordable housing. The motion passed unanimously and supports staff in their request to the Federal Government for four specific items.
- Maintaining the $30M for existing Social Housing agreements due to expire and ensuring municipalities have flexibility to invest funding in their communities based on need;
- Tripling the City’s current allocation under the Investing in Affordable Housing program to approximately $200M;
- Expanding the funding for Social Housing repairs to address the annual $22M for deferred maintenance; and
- Maintaining and expanding on the recent increase in the federal Homelessness Partnering Strategy.
2017 has been called the year of housing and now more than ever it is important that our City be ready for any new funding or programming announced by upper tier governments. If successful, these funds would allow us to more significantly respond to these demands and continue to make Ottawa a caring city.
Check out CBC’s coverage on this topic here.