Bruce Power has announced a new affordable housing seed funding program.
John Peevers, Director of Community, Media Relations and Economic Development at Bruce Power, says the program aims to aid municipalities in bringing more affordable housing to the region.
"Whether it's through helping to pay for grant applications, rent supplement programs — which some municipalities have — consulting work, planning fees, just to offset some of those costs that municipalities ae faced with as they do a great job already of trying to make sure there's enough attainable and affordable housing in our region," he said.
Peevers notes that with Bruce Power bringing in many workers and new partners to facilitate projects there, they acknowledged that employees not only there, but region-wide, will need access to more housing options.
"You can say it's a good problem to have with all these new people coming to our region, but it's a challenge to make sure that everybody's got access to housing," he said. "It's one of those fundamental rights that everyone should have. So that's another reason that sort of spurred us on to make sure we're helping out where we can and stimulate the development of new, affordable housing."
The Statistics Canada 2021 census results show significant growth across the region. Since the last census in 2016, the region expanded by 6.5 per cent, a population growth rate 12 per cent faster than Ontario’s (5.8) and 25 percent faster than Canada’s as a whole (5.2).
“The growth in our region has shown that there’s a real need for more affordable housing options and we’re hoping that this seed funding can help the municipalities get new projects off the ground,” said Peevers.
The funding for municipalities to access will be $250,000 over the next five years, and Bruce Power will be reaching out to local governments to detail how the applications will work, including how to apply and the application periods.
"We expect we will have a lot of interest and a lot of conversations. We're having them already, and that's great, that's exactly what we were hoping to do, is stimulate those conversations. So we're going to share that information directly with municipalities so that they have all the information they need to be able to access this fund," Peevers shared.
With the program just launching, Peevers says will be shared as equitably as possible, and there is already plenty of interest as previously noted.
"Municipalities across our region, across Ontario, across Canada, this isn't a unique problem to Bruce, Grey and Huron. It's acute in some areas and we acknowledge that the nuclear industry is a key driver of the local economy and that's one of the reasons that we wanna make sure that access to affordable housing is something that everyone has," Peevers concluded.
“It’s clear that the nuclear industry is a key driver of the local economy, but we also recognize that access to affordable housing is an issue across Ontario and in our region,” added James Scongack, Bruce Power Chief Development Officer and Executive Vice-President. “While we’re proud to bring opportunities and positive economic impacts to our communities, we need to also help support municipalities in building the infrastructure to support this growth.”
Minimum requirements for the fund include, but are not limited to, affordability, economic sustainability, and housing for those in greatest need.
The proposed rents must be affordable (at or below 80 per cent of the average market rents), they must have a minimum of five affordable housing units, the primary use must be residential and the project must be located in Bruce, Grey and Huron Counties and applicants must be a municipal or county entity.