(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Alessia Proietti

City council

Red Deer approves new incentive grant for permanent supportive housing; contingent on federal grant

Sep 18, 2023 | 9:41 PM

Red Deer city council approved the creation of a new municipal incentive grant for permanent supportive housing; on the condition they receive a grant by the federal government.

At their regular meeting on Monday, city council approved the “Permanent Supportive Housing Capital Grant Program”. The program aims to leverage federal funding to target one of the city’s largest identified housing gaps by incentivizing up to 80 units of permanent supportive housing, as outlined in the Community Housing & Homelessness Integrated Plan (CHHIP).

As of September 13, 115 individuals in Red Deer are awaiting housing and homelessness supports. The City says 101 of those individuals have highly complex needs requiring long-term supportive housing. However, due to the few spaces available, 94 of them have been waiting for over 45 days and seven have been waiting for over one year.

According to the 2019 CHHIP, the City has a target 139 spaces but, currently, there is a shortfall of 77 spaces and only ten units have become available since January 2023.

This May, council directed administration to return during the mid-year budget review in November 2023 to propose a financial incentive program for the community’s housing needs.

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However, this July, the provincial government announced $68 million for a second round of their Affordable Housing Partnership Program, with an application deadline of October 16, 2023. Through the program, organizations can apply for up to one third of total project costs and are required to secure the balance of capital costs through other sources, including federal, municipal, donations and private sources.

The City claims applications to provincial programs have been shown to be more successful when municipalities commit with additional funding.

“When municipalities act as funding partners, it incentivizes development of much needed housing, which is what we aim to do with this grant program,” said Kristin Walsh, Manager for the City’s Safe & Healthy Communities. “Having this grant program supported by council now allows us to identify shovel-ready projects in the community and, if successful in receiving the grant from the Government of Alberta, allow us to allocate funding for these projects, quickly.”

The City says they have applied to the Canadian government’s Housing Accelerator Fund for $6 million, which they will then put into their Permanent Supportive Housing Capital Grant Program. They say the federal grant is one of the first funding initiatives directed to municipalities rather than developers. Municipalities can then reallocate the funding to a range of incentive programs to support local housing needs and gaps.

Administration says that while they anticipate to hear a response in early Fall 2023, some municipalities like London, a city of roughly 400,000 people in Ontario, have already heard the results of their successful application.

However, Mayor Ken Johnston says Red Deer has not been successful in acquiring federal capital grants for housing in the past. He says that Western Canada in general has received less than three per cent of funding by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and prior to the London announcement, no money had been allocated towards any city in the country with less than one million people.

“The old saying in the country is, ‘the feds have the money and the province has the authority and the city has the problems’ and that is 1,000 per cent accurate because we have been telling the feds and telling the province along these many years that the roof is ready and ready to be leaking any time it rains and it is raining, as it relates to housing in this country. Suddenly municipalities find themselves being stepped on when they’re being challenged to ‘step up’,” he said, quoting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“Who do you think has been paying the social consequences, the encampment consequences, the medical consequences, the relational consequences, the loss of business investment; who do you think has been paying for that in our country in the last 10 years?”

The mayor suggested that if they do not get the funding, the federal government should allow them to take the retroactive pay imposed on municipalities for the RCMP and reallocate it to permanent supportive housing needs.

The grant focuses on capital costs only. While initial operating dollars have been set aside from carry forwards, administration says they will explore opportunities with provincial and federal governments for ongoing operational funding to support permanent supportive housing programs in the future.

While waiting to hear the results of the application, the City says they will soon be posting a Request for Information (RFI) on their Bids and Tenders site to learn about potential shovel-ready permanent supportive housing projects in Red Deer.

The City says their Permanent Supportive Housing Capital Grant Program is dependent on the federal grant funding.

More information on Housing & Homelessness efforts can be found on their website.