Victoria city council has approved three grants worth a combined $2.18 million from its housing reserve fund to support the creation of 247 affordable and supportive housing units.
While the funding was approved unanimously, it sparked discussion about the effects of concentrating supportive housing in a small area of the city.
Council gave the green light to a $1.16 million grant for the Capital Region Housing Corporation for a 158-unit affordable rental building at 926-930 Pandora Ave., a $757,500 grant for the M’akola Housing Society to help build a 55-unit affordable rental project at 210-220 Langford St. and 824 Alston St. in Vic West, and $262,500 for the Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness Society to help build a 34-unit Indigenous supportive-housing project at 938 Mason St.
Coun. Jeremy Caradonna said the groups are all “rock stars of supportive and affordable housing,” but he’s concerned about the location of the projects.
Caradonna said the addition of two new projects in the North Park neighbourhood — the Capital Region Housing Corporation and Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness Society’s projects are a block apart — means there will soon be four supportive or transitional housing projects within about 200 metres of each other.
“That defies logic and it defies good city building practices,” he said. “It breaks all the rules of good urbanism because we are putting all of the people with high needs and poverty needs in the same small cluster.”
Caradonna said the city, sa国际传媒 Housing and the non-profit organizations that run the facilities have over the years established a “ghetto” around the 900-block of Pandora.
“I’m not certain that the folks who are moving into the 900 blocks of North Park are being set up for success, frankly, because these are people, vulnerable people looking to exit homelessness, looking to exit drug addiction … [who] now have to walk through an open-air drug market in a ghetto.
“I don’t think it’s helpful for them. I don’t think it’s helpful for the neighbourhood.”
Coun. Dave Thompson said he also has questions about the effect on the occupants of concentrating supportive housing in one area. He said he’s unlikely to support any further concentration in the area. “I will need to see solid research saying that this level of concentration is either good for folks who are going to be living in it or at the very minimum is not an issue at all for those folks.”
Coun. Matt Dell said while he will always support more supportive housing in Victoria – he said the city likely needs to double or triple the amount available – it would be nice to see other municipalities step up and take on some of the responsibility.
Mayor Marianne Alto said conversations are needed about the distribution of this type of housing, and getting other municipalities in the region to build more of it.
But she held out hope Victoria council would always be willing to consider more.
“I believe absolutely, fundamentally, that supportive housing is one of the many key answers to moving people out of sheltering and out of homelessness, and that is something that we can never turn away from,” she said.
Coun. Krista Loughton said there is more going into the North Park neighbourhood than just supportive housing, noting there are plans for new market-rental buildings planned for Pandora.
“There’s so much happening there. So I don’t think that we necessarily need to sound the alarm here,” she said.
She also noted there is a crisis-level need for deeply affordable housing and Victoria just doesn’t have enough of it.
“Are we taking on the lion’s share of the region? Well, yes, we are, but we need to work on that in a proactive way with our colleagues in other municipalities,” she said.
After the grants are paid out, the housing reserve fund balance will be $1.62 million. The next intake of applications will be next March.
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