St. Albert’s role in affordable housing needs to be made clear, in that it will only provide one-time capital grants or land donations – and not fund ongoing operations, a council committee told staff this past week.
St. Albert’s community living standing committee received an update Monday on the city’s progress towards creating an affordable housing model. City staff were seeking direction from the committee as they work toward drafting affordable housing options to present to city council in the spring.
“I would like to see our dollars stretch as far as they can go, certainly we have finite funds to invest in anything and I want to make sure they’re used as efficiently as possible,” said Coun. Natalie Joly in an interview.
During committee, Joly said council needs to state very clearly St. Albert will not provide ongoing operational funding and instead will donate land or make capital donations.
Two other governance models were on the table, which the committee expressed no interest in. Those involved designating Homeland Housing as the city’s housing lead, or St. Albert essentially becoming a landlord by forming a housing corporation.
While currently there are nine housing organizations operating in St. Albert, the city only funds the St. Albert Housing Society for operations. Over 11 years, St. Albert has given $1.1 million to the housing society for operations, but this year the society received a 42-per-cent cut to its outside agency operating grant compared to last year.
Joly told the Gazette that million dollars could have gone toward capital for building new units, and in the long term St. Albert wants to make sure it is maximizing funding.
“If we had unlimited funding, yes absolutely let’s fund everyone, but we don’t have unlimited funding so we need those dollars to stretch as far as we can,” she said.
During committee, Joly said the city needs to give the housing society notice “if that’s not the direction we’re going,” in terms of funding operating costs.
Mayor Cathy Heron said the dollars St. Albert has been spending on operating costs could be “very easily” redirected to a fund for affordable housing capital investment, which would be a “better use of our money.”
“Those kind of policy things is where we really should be focusing our attention,” Heron said. “And then the amount of money we were spending on operations for outside groups could be very easily redirected, to a fund and maybe that would be a recommendation that is coming in June, that we would set up a fund that would be sort of capital for investment in this community.”
