An affordable housing project geared specifically to seniors may be coming to downtown Orillia.
Sionito Group of Charities and Weston Consulting laid out preliminary plans for a four-storey, 95-unit assisted living building at 26 West St. N. at Monday’s council meeting.
Current plans also include 35 parking spaces in addition to a small urban square for the property, which is currently home to Crunch Fitness.
Sionito Group of Charities founder Bryce Taylor said his organization currently manages three affordable housing developments in the Toronto area, with a fourth underway. He said the group is currently in the process of purchasing the West Street North property.
The idea is to make support workers available to tenants, Taylor said, who noted the facility is also likely to include congregate kitchens for residents to use, with kitchenettes in the units.
“If you're a senior, and you've got mental health challenges or any other challenges … if you talk to them and start to work with them, the thing that they want is independence,” Taylor said. “That's all they want, basically, and what we see ourselves doing is facilitating that. We're not there to offer a slew of services.”
Beyond providing affordable homes where tenants can maintain their independence, previous projects leveraged existing local social services to bring some supports to their tenants, Taylor said.
“We do not attract funds from the Ministry of Health. We expect those funds to go to community clinics and community-based agencies in the community, already funded, and then we just make sure that, on an as-needed basis, our tenants have a support worker from one of those agencies,” he said.
The affordable rent levels for previous Sionito projects are the result of cooperation between the government and the charity, Taylor said.
“Those projects then were owned and operated by charities, and as a result of that the government at all levels has given us either subsidies, rent subsidies, or grants … over the years,” he said. “It's a great partnership between governments and charities. It really works.”
Council asked a number of questions about the potential project.
“Provided the economics of the day are in line, would you consider going up a couple more floors because of the desperate need for facilities like this in Orillia?” asked Coun. Ralph Cipolla. “What (is) going to be the cost for each one of these apartments?”
“The costs will have to be affordable costs,” answered Taylor. “In Ontario, we do have tenant subsidies, and that means that if you're on an ODSP pension, or you're on a seniors pension, then you will be able to move into those types of projects at about 30 per cent of your income. The rest is subsidized by one of the government at all levels.”
Mallory Nievas from Weston Consulting said the building is planned at four stories because “that’s what’s permitted as of right now.”
With additional stories, she said, there would need to be a zoning amendment for the property, but Taylor said he would be open to considering additional floors, mentioning they could, perhaps, be rented at market rates to help subsidize lower rents throughout the building.
Coun. David Campbell spoke positively of the potential project, but noted the parking lot at 26 West St. N. is currently leased by the city.
“What I want to remind councillors of is that this is currently a leased parking lot for the city that's extremely well used on any given day,” he said. “We have already talked about the units above the post office and there's no parking there, so we're going to have some folks looking for parking, (and a) possible solution would be this lot.
“If this moves forward (that lot) would no longer exist. I only bring this up to bring that to everyone's attention. And I think everyone needs to keep that in mind as we move forward and start talking about parking solutions for the downtown," said Campbell.
Coun. Luke Leatherdale asked whether tenants for the project would primarily come from Orillia.
Similarly to how previous Sionito projects relied on existing social services for their tenants, Taylor mentioned tenants are sourced through existing social service agencies as well.
“It would be dependent, primarily, on the reach of your community-based social service agencies," Taylor said of potential tenants. "If they have a reach out into the rural areas or out into neighbouring areas, then I presume they would get referrals from there, and those would be passed through to us.”
