Nipissing District needs 6,000 more affordable housing units, report finds

Nipissing needs 6K new affordable housing units A new study says the District of Nipissing needs 6,000 new geared-to-income and affordable housing units.

A new study says the District of Nipissing needs 6,000 new geared-to-income and affordable housing units.

The District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board commissioned SHS Consulting to study and examine affordable housing targets for the next decade.

"Much of it is underlined by the low family income. Nipissing has one of the lowest family net incomes in northern Ontario and in the province," said board chair Mark King.

The report highlighted the need for new rent-geared-to-income units, affordable rentals and affordable homeownership units in its 11 municipalities for the next 10 years.

"We have existing buildings in the community that require repairs, but there's insufficient funds at the federal level to actually repair these buildings," King said.

"Much of it revolves around water damage."

Key findings show North Bay requires more than 4,500 units -- close to 1,100 are needed in West Nipissing, Mattawa is shy of 200, Bonfield needs 66 units and Temagami needs 64.

Make Housing Affordable, an organization that advocates for pushing the provincial and federal governments to properly fund affordable housing projects, said it’s all about current supply and demand issues.

"The big issue is … the units are disappearing faster than they're being newly built," said president Brandon Bay.

"We need more federal and provincial support to be able to afford these things. We need to see some leadership. Just trying to find anything within your price point, whatever that price point, is difficult. That's what people are really struggling with."

Bay points to a time when there was a boom in affordable housing development in the 1970s.

"Then we saw successive governments … federally and provincially make massive cuts to that. The (Mike) Harris government downloaded all that responsibility onto Ontario's municipalities in the first place and just sort of left them to figure it out for themselves," he said.

"The leadership hasn't been there to restore the needed funding."

The report said the figures are consistent with results that indicated that Canada has the lowest housing stock per capita in comparison to other G7 countries.

The services board expects the report will be used to explore shovel-in-the-ground ready projects and prioritize future development based on municipality need and unit size and will be critical in pushing upper levels of government for financial help.

"We’re all singing from the same song sheet," King said.

"I'll be in Toronto on the 17th, 18th of January for the ROMA meetings and we have a number of meetings, actually, with the housing minister."

The board plans to work with its municipalities on building strategies to entice housing development and chain opportunities for public and private sector partners interested in building affordable housing.