Mayor Don McIsaac presented a cheque for more than $100,000 to Raising the Roof Wednesday in support of the non-profit’s planned affordable housing project at the Canada Post office at 25 Peter St. N.
The cheque comes as part of a $129,250 grant from the city to aid with purchasing the property for the 40-unit project, including a portion of the administrative fees for the development application.
Raising the Roof is the first organization to garner financial support from the city’s new affordable housing incentives program, which was created in 2020 to support organizations working to increase the city’s affordable housing supply.
“Capital is something that you need in order to make affordable housing work in a community,” said Adrian Dingle, Raising the Roof’s director of housing development.
“This cheque is great in terms of the cash that it brings to the actual development, but it's also a great symbol of Orillia standing behind the development, which is just something that we really need and want to see happen.”
McIsaac said the project is important for the community, explaining the city’s support is part of a “multi-pronged” approach to address affordable housing, mental health, and homelessness in Orillia.
“It's a very important project … and we're quite excited about it because one of the priorities we identified at the door was housing, affordable housing,” McIsaac said.
“People can't find housing, we've got homeless issues; we’ve got people who just can't get into a house and this is going to help them in a big way," said the mayor.
“We've got, obviously, encampments, homelessness, the opioid crisis, mental health issues – these are all sort of coming together, and this is one way we can deal with it. In one way it's a little bit of a band aid, but another way it's a step forward," said McIsaac.
As it stands, a minimum of 24 of the project’s 40 units will be affordable units, Dingle said, rented at 80 per cent of market rate.
Raising the Roof previously hoped to offer “deeply affordable” units in the project, potentially as low as $434 per month, but the County of Simcoe denied a funding request necessary to do so in January.
However, Dingle said Raising the Roof is still seeking additional funding for the project from various organizations and all levels of government.
“The funding that we can receive is going to go towards us being able to provide deeper levels of affordability at the building,” Dingle explained. “As we go through the process of securing additional funding over the coming months, the success of those funding applications will dictate the level of affordability that we can provide to people at the building.”
Dingle said Raising the Roof is currently working on the site plan approval process, with the goal to begin construction “early next year.”
The plan is to renovate the second floor of the post office building to create 20 units and construct a third floor with another 20.
