Lanark County has approved the affordable housing project in Perth, led by St. James the Apostle church, along with a forgivable loan of $2.5 million.
The decision means that after more than three years spent enlisting support within the community and the town and county councils there is a realistic hope of getting shovels in the ground by year’s end.
St. James has played a leadership role in Community Housing Initiative Perth (CHIP) the organization that successfully lobbied the town council to transfer town land at 63 Halton St. The council approved the transfer to Carebridge Community Support for one dollar in April, allowing Carebridge to respond to Lanark’s Request for Proposals for capital funding. The Carebridge – CHIP proposal won over three other applications.
CHIP is embarking on a $300,000 fundraising campaign. The Rev. Canon Kenneth Davis, rector of St James and co-chair of CHIP, says the first contribution will be $10,000 from St. James. The funds come from a portion of the sale of St. Augustine’s chapel on the Franktown Road which the Diocese allowed St. James to retain. The amount happens to be equal to the seed money provided by the Diocese to St. James to help get the project started.
Canon Davis has encouraged anyone in the congregation who wishes, to make a donation to St. James and it will be added to the $10,000.
He has also challenged all churches in Perth to match St. James’s donation. “I’d like us as Christians in town to aim for at least a third of the $300,000 goal.”
Carebridge Community Support, as owner and developer, (with the Saumure Group as contractor), has offered to match CHIP’s fundraising from its own equity, effectively doubling the total. CHIP’s fundraising co-chairs Claire Smith and Linda Chaim are optimistic about finding another matching donor.
The approved project is for 15 units, seven designated for rent-geared-to-income tenants (to pay no more than one third of household income), the remaining eight at rates well below market rents ($720 a month for a single bedroom apartment and $895 for two bedrooms). Tenants will come from Lanark County’s wait list of about 450, half from Perth.
CHIP plans to host two meetings this fall to address concerns of neighbours. Town officials will
be invited to attend. The first meeting, likely in late September, will be to hear any recommendations and concerns. Detailed building design and plans will be introduced in a second meeting about a month later.
Canon Davis says neighbours are divided, some enthusiastically in support. “There are still some NIMBY people (not in my back yard) — no question.” He puts some of the concerns down to poor communications with the town over several years.
Concern that the project may be enlarged in future will be allayed by a firm undertaking that it will not be. The site will be 40 feet from the nearest private property and adjacent green space will not be encroached. Recognizing that tenants may not have experience living in a new home, a team of trained volunteers with lived experience be available to help them. The model will be a team of volunteers that St. James organized to help settle Syrian refugees.
“We have to work with the town’s poison pill (unique in our county) of not waiving taxes and development fees,” Canon Davis says. Considering taxes over 20 years, he estimates, this is adding close to a $1 million to the total cost. The cost, set at about $3 million, will now be more than $4 million.
“Our town wants to profit financially from an affordable housing project…on a piece of property from which it has never received a dime of taxes,” he says. “It’s town-owned land that used to be a public works site.”
Lanark County on the other hand has waived its share of the taxes, providing an annual operating grant equal to the taxes to Carebridge.
Carebridge already has 221 units in the county, including the 34 in the Smiths Falls project supported by St. John the Evangelist, providing a mix of rent-geared-to-income, affordable and market units.
St. John, Antrim — Deanery of the Southwest