Morinville’s first affordable housing project is now officially underway, and it will likely be the most energy-efficient place in town once it’s built.
Morinville Mayor Barry Turner and Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman were scheduled to break ground on the new Morinville Affordable Housing Project Wednesday morning after this edition went to press.
The project is the first affordable housing complex to be built in Morinville and is also the community’s first net-zero housing complex. Net-zero buildings produce as much energy as they use during a year, meaning they produce no net greenhouse gas emissions.
Homeland Housing chief executive officer Raymond Cormie said Turner and the other dignitaries would shovel some ceremonial sand indoors at the Community Cultural Centre instead of trying to dig into the actual construction site (which is northwest of the town’s cemetery) because it was so cold out.
Town council green-lit this 48-unit rental complex Nov. 27. The complex, which consists of a four-storey apartment centre flanked by two 2.5-storey townhouses, is being built with the help of a roughly $750,000 provincial grant.
It’s the end of a long quest for affordable housing in Morinville that started back in 2008 when the town got a $451,000 affordable housing grant from the province.
In an email and in-person interview, Mayor Barry Turner said this project was the result of an innovative partnership, with the town providing the land, the province the grant dollars and Homeland Housing (which normally does seniors housing) the management.
While council could have used some of this cash for more short-term housing solutions, Turner said the town decided to wait until it got a proposal that gave it the most impact for its affordable housing dollar. The result is a project that will increase housing options to a far greater degree than the town could have done on its own.
“Although the project did take longer than anticipated to come together, the community will benefit from it for years to come,” Turner said.
Cormie said these units would likely cost 75 to 90 per cent of the market rate to rent. The units will probably be in high demand, he added – Homeland Housing had a one-year waiting list to get into its North Ridge Lodge affordable housing project when it opened a few years ago in St. Albert, and that one was seniors-specific.
“Affordable housing is not just about homelessness,” Cormie said – it’s about young families struggling to get by on beginner jobs, and about seniors living on fixed incomes.
“It’s a foot up in being able to have a clean, safe, comfortable home.”
Net-zero first
Net-zero energy guru and project adviser Peter Amerongen confirmed this is the first net-zero housing complex in Morinville and one of only a handful of net-zero affordable housing projects in Canada.Affordable housing and net-zero are actually a good fit, said Andrew Mills of the Edmonton Eco-Solar Home Tour, who was not connected with this project. Multifamily homes have fewer exterior walls, which means fewer walls to insulate, and can use large, common, super-efficient heating systems instead of many smaller ones, with the cost spread across many units.
Cormie said his team got the idea to make this complex net-zero during the design process as a way to lower its utility bills, which were a big factor in rental rates.
Amerongen said this complex used triple-pane windows, air source heat pumps, heat recovery systems and super-insulated walls, roofs and basements to shrink its energy needs to the point that they could be met entirely with rooftop solar panels.
“It’s got very low operating costs forever,” he said, which means Homeland Housing can offer very low rents forever – all for only a slight uptick in capital costs.
Cormie said he hopes to have this project built and tenants moved in by next spring.
