Winkler got some bad news last week about its application to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF).
The city had applied for approximately $10.3 million of the $4 billion earmarked by the federal government to help communities across Canada address the housing crisis.
Word came down from the fund’s administrators last Thursday that Winkler’s application was unsuccessful.
“We’re obviously quite disappointed,” Mayor Henry Siemens said in sharing the news. “We submitted our application and had really good thoughts in terms of what we had put forward.”
Winkler’s application drew on data gleaned from a housing needs assessment council commissioned last year.
That report shows the number of private dwellings added to Winkler on an annual basis will not keep up with future demand, nor is there enough rental units to meet current and future demand.
The assessment also identified the growing need for a variety of different types of housing options in the community—more affordable units for young families looking to get into the market, accessible housing for aging seniors, and more subsidized and social housing units.
The HAF application outlined how the City of Winkler intended to use the funds to create incentives that would accelerate housing starts in the community.
It projected that without funding Winkler is looking at 244 new housing units over the next three years. With the funding, that number was expected to reach 519 units.
The plan called for 138 units to fall under the definition of affordable housing. The application noted two different non-profits in the area had 25-unit and 26-unit affordable housing projects ready to go in recent years, but both were unable to get shovels in the ground due to rising construction costs and insufficient grant funding. HAF dollars would have allowed those projects to move forward.
Siemens says they’ll be speaking with HAF reps to see where Winkler’s application may have fallen short, in the hopes that, if there should be a future round of funding, they can present a stronger case.
“Is there something we missed?” he said, wondering if perhaps Winkler’s application was the victim of bad timing. “Potentially, when we look at it, a lot of the monies that were going out [to other communities] were going to try to get some significant changes to zoning bylaws and things like that. Things we have already been doing over the last three or four years … so we’re wondering if potentially being ahead of the game there maybe hurt us in that regard.”
That said, it may have also simply been a matter of too many applications and two few available dollars.
“Four billion dollars sounds like an awful lot of money, but on a per capita basis it really doesn’t go far,” Siemens acknowledged, noting the HAF received over 500 submissions across the country.
So what’s next? Siemens says Winkler can’t afford to not address its housing shortage, and council will be looking at what it can do to encourage and support a range of residential projects.
“It’s something that happens time after time in southern Manitoba,” he said. “If we don’t get support, then we find a way to just do it a different way.”
“The need is definitely there. We have to do something.”
A housing task force has been created to continue to discuss the matter and potential solutions.
“That task force isn’t specifically [focused on] affordable housing,” Siemens noted. “That is built to find ways to build housing along the entire housing continuum, to find ways to support the growth of housing in this area.
“Are there things that we can do as the City of Winkler?” he said, noting the city may not have the funds to financially support major housing projects, but the question they’re asking is “how can we get out of the way and how do we help” make them a reality.
