Following a suggestion by Coun. Jay Fallis, council may increase the city’s contribution to its affordable housing reserve fund by $100,000 in the 2024 budget.
Fallis brought the idea forward at Monday’s council meeting, and council agreed to forward the proposal to budget deliberations for further consideration.
“There are a lot of challenges … with poverty, homelessness in our community, and one of the essential ways to address that is through increasing funding for projects that can alleviate that,” Fallis said.
Currently, the reserve sits at $360,750. Last year, the city raised its contribution to $200,000 annually, and Fallis has proposed raising that figure to $300,000 for 2024.
“We've been building up the affordable housing reserve over several years now, and it's beginning to get to a point where we can now say that there's … significant opportunities for affordable housing providers to take advantage, and as a result build quicker or build more units,” Fallis said. “In order to really make this leap towards addressing this issue, I think this is a really important part of that.”
The affordable housing reserve was originally created in 2018 to ensure city funding is available when non-profit agencies and developers apply for the city’s affordable housing incentives program.
Coun. Ralph Cipolla suggested shelving Fallis’ idea until more is known about what the county plans to do for affordable housing.
“I support affordable housing, but I think this is a responsibility of the county. We shouldn't specifically put it on our taxpayers until we know what the county's doing with this, and maybe just table it until we get the county's budget on this,” he said. “To tax the taxpayers of Orillia for an extra $100,000 at this time, in my opinion, is not warranted.”
However, a majority of council supported discussing the idea further during budget deliberations.
Coun. Janet-Lynn Durnford noted various non-profit agencies working to build affordable housing in the community, such as the Raising the Roof project planned for the Canada Post building on Peter Street, and she said there are likely to be more who seek funding for affordable housing projects.
“I think we can anticipate that there will be quite a few developers who will be looking for this incentive funding, and I just want to note I would love more support from the county, as well … but these are really our made-in-Orillia incentives,” she said.
“These are particularly incentives to be used within the city, and I think this is the time to commit more to that fund. (It) may not be necessary in perpetuity, but it's certainly necessary now," Durnford added.
