The city’s annual contributions to its affordable housing reserve could climb dramatically in 2025, with one city councillor stressing that “the time for action is now.”
At Monday’s council meeting, Mayor Don McIsaac and councillors Jay Fallis and Janet-Lynne Durnford proposed raising the city’s reserve contributions by $250,000 per year, with council agreeing to forward the request to the 2025 budget deliberations.
If approved in next year’s budget, the city’s contribution would climb to $575,000 in 2025 and 2026, and $550,000 in 2027 and 2028, which would result in $2,875,000 in affordable housing contributions between 2023 and 2028. Currently, the reserve carries a balance of $699,576.
During the meeting, Fallis pointed out the newly opened County Orillia Campus Project on West Street North has already received far more applications than can be accommodated in its 130 affordable units.
“The county received 375 applications for those units on the first day it opened, and over the course of that month received at least 1,020 online applications,” he said. “If that doesn't speak to the desperate need for affordable housing within our community, I don't know what does.”
“It's very clear the time for action is now, and I really do hope that council as a whole will support this move when it comes to budget,” Fallis said.
Previously, the city’s annual contribution climbed from $200,000 in 2023 to $425,000 in 2024.
Last year’s hike included a permanent $100,000 increase, a temporary one-time redistribution of $100,000 from the capital levy reserve, and a temporary $25,000 redistribution from the downtown tomorrow community improvement plan reserve through 2026.
Council broadly spoke in favour of the move, but Coun. Tim Lauer questioned whether there is a way to ensure city funds are used to ensure space for people in need in Orillia.
Residents in the West Street South rapid supportive rehousing project, as an example, can come from Simcoe County communities beyond Orillia.
“I still have a great concern subsidizing the county,” Lauer said.
“There are not-for-profit groups that are going to come forward … but in a lot of those cases they are asking for county funds, and if they get county funds, then that comes with stipulations, rules, parameters," said the Ward 4 councillor.
“I'm just wondering … whether we should have parameters on if we're going to give money to affordable housing development, how much of it should be for Orillians in Orillia – those kinds of questions, I think, will need to be answered," Lauer said.
In order to use reserve funds the way Lauer proposed, city staff said amendments would need to be made to the city’s affordable housing incentives policy to control how funds are used when the county is involved in a project.
“The city's money that it offers for affordable housing, as an adjunct to what county offers, is all paid for through our affordable housing reserve, and is doled out or approved by virtue of the council's affordable housing incentives policy,” said Ian Sugden, the city's general manager of development services and engineering.
“Essentially, we put in a small amount of funds towards the cost of an affordable housing project and the county also is funding that project,” he said. “Their share is going to be much larger than ours. To control how our funds are used and amendments that policy would be required. At this point.
While he said he is “totally supportive” of affordable housing, Coun. Ralph Cipolla also raised concerns about burdening local taxpayers with the additional funding, which would approximately amount to a 0.34 per cent increase to the city levy next year if approved.
Coun. Janet-Lynne Durnford, however, pointed out federal funding for affordable housing projects often requires commitments from other levels of government as well.
“There's a lot of federal funding available to not-for-profit developers for the creation of affordable housing, and that funding, as I understand it, is contingent on commitments from both the municipal and the county levels of government,” she said.
After council decided to forward the discussion to the 2025 budget deliberations, Cam Davidson – chair of the city’s affordable housing committee – said the proposed funding hike could be a “game changer” for local affordable housing.
When not-for-profit builders come to the table with a proposal, a robust affordable housing reserve can help the city “fill in the gaps” to get projects off the ground, Davidson said.
“That gives us the opportunity to say to any prospective builder or proponent of affordable housing (that) we can help you get to where you want to be,” he told OrilliaMatters. “Where there's a gap where the developer says, ‘OK, I need a little extra money for this,’ (or with) development charges … then we're in a position where we can really help them out.”
With regard to potential tax hikes, Davidson said investing funds over a period of years is a better alternative than attempting to do so in a shorter time frame.
“It doesn't have to come all at once. It doesn't have to be a great big tax increase,” he said. “This kind of thing, what council’s proposing, is a really good alternative – it’s not touching the tax levy by more than three tenths of a per cent.”
Given the need for affordable housing, Davidson said the “bottom line is we have to build.”
“The numbers aren't going down, they are going up,” he said. “Being short on housing, it’s not just the homeless anymore – it’s the middle class.”
“It's not rocket science. We have to build to take care of this problem.”
