Moncton Supports $12-Million Affordable Housing Project
MONCTON – Moncton City Councillors unanimously threw their support behind Rising Tide Community Initiatives Inc., a new non-profit housing entity aimed at tackling homelessness, which is asking for $6 million each from the municipal and provincial governments over three years.
Representatives of Rising Tide presented the organization’s business plan in front of the council on Monday night.
“I think the community as a whole doesn’t care whose jurisdiction it is, they just want the problem fixed. So this is the proposal to both levels of government to fix the problem,” Dale Hicks, the president of Food Depot Alimentaire who is also a founding member of Rising Tide, told reporters after the presentation.
The council’s vote means city administration can proceed to work with Rising Tide to discuss funding with the province, and initiate a formal internal review to consider the financial implications for the municipality. The administration is scheduled to provide council with options on March 16.
Rising Tide plans to use the funds to deliver a three-year program that will create 125 affordable units, with eight case managers to help those who need them. The $12-million also includes about $2.2-million for operational budget and property maintenance, as well as a reserve for the fourth year of operations.
Within the first year of getting funding from municipal and provincial governments, the organization plans to hire an executive director and a second staff member and buy and renovate properties to house 25 people, along with the wrap-around support services.
“We’ll take one [property] and we’ll do it right, and then when we learn from that first initiative, then we can start and roll it out from there,” Hicks said.
Down the line, it also plans to create a community foundation that will run a fundraising campaign targeting the private sector.
“We think there’s a bunch of people in the business community, and there are some individuals out there who want to support this issue,” Hicks said. “We’re not the least bit concerned that if we get this thing up and going that we can’t sustain it. If we didn’t have one penny come forward as a donation at the end of the three years, we got $8-million worth of properties that are paid for, so we can turn around and leverage that.”
Learning from the success of the At Home Chez Soi project that focuses on housing with supports, Rising Tide aims to move people along the housing continuum – from homelessness to being to afford market-price rent. It plans to work closely with organizations that are already on the front lines of homelessness, as well as other organizations that can help in other ways, such as churches, construction firms, and the chamber of commerce.
Rising Tide envisions its properties to be partly affordable housing and partly market-price rental units. The affordable units would cost no more than 30 percent of a person’s monthly income with some renters having peer-support or case management workers to will help them stay on track. The market-price units would help subsidize the lower-priced ones, Hicks said.
The average rental price for an apartment in Greater Moncton is around $831 a month.
The City of Moncton’s funding commitment is still contingent on the provincial government’s commitment to do the same. But Hicks says the city’s move to signal its support will likely push the province to do the same, especially because the city has said multiple times that housing is a provincial jurisdiction.
“I think if Moncton takes a leadership role to step off the curb first and say, ‘okay, we’re willing to make a move here and meet you halfway, are you coming or not?’ I think that says volumes for the city to do that,” he said.
Hicks says the provincial government had indicated a liking to the idea in a January meeting with Minister of Social Development Dorothy Shepherd and staff members of the department.
“We met with them and explained what we were doing. We told them we were coming to council. They were encouraged by that but they didn’t make any commitments outside of they liked our plan,” he said.
With the tabling of the provincial budget closing in, Hicks is also optimistic Rising Tide will get the funding support it needs this year.
“…I don’t think it’s a big ask in the scheme of things. I think they can find the money somewhere,” he said.
With a vacancy rate as low as 2.2 percent, affordable housing has been a hot discussion topic in Greater Moncton.
According to the 2018 Experiencing Homelessness Report Card for Greater Moncton, 1,681 families and individuals are on the waiting list for subsidized housing, 729 people were admitted to shelters and 113 are chronically homeless. There are also more than 7,800 low-income assistance claimants in area.
Homelessness and security have also been the top concern of businesses in the area, according to a recent survey by the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Moncton.
“I think the business community sees dealing with these issues, helping to solve it, as to their benefit,” said CCGM CEO John Wishart, who also noted that doing so will ensure Moncton is a good and safe place to do business and invest.
Wishart sees the chamber playing a role in helping support lobbying efforts with the provincial government, and possibly at the federal level as well. In the future, he also sees the chamber play a role in helping match workers with employers, as well as help in efforts to fundraise with the private sector.