Are you in a housing pinch? St. John's takes new strategy on affordable housing to public

A new City of St. John's housing initiative announced Thursday includes a10-year planaimed at helping those forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their money on housing and may not be aware they are in a muddle.

According to statistics released during a media briefing atcity hall, about 12,100 households in the city are classified as "unaffordable" and that's because families or individualsspend more than 30 per cent of their income on rent.

"With that in mind, a lot of people will sort of do the math on their own situations and realize that they may actually be in housing which isunaffordable," said Coun. Hope Jamieson, who leads the council's work on housing issues.

"It's a really common situation for people to find themselves in It's so common, it might not be something that people are aware of."

The affordable housing strategy picks up where a previous business plan had left off.

"It involves a bunch of plans both internally and externally working with partners to advocate for a policy change that the city will undertake over the next 10years," Jamiesontold reporters.

Plan to be reviewed every 3 years

Jamieson said the city will do a review every three years to ensure the strategy is on the right track, and whether it needs to change.

Joanne Thompson, executive director with the Gathering Place in St. John's, said she happily welcomes the new plan, which she called a positive step in the right direction.

• Gathering Place nearing crisis as demand grows for services

However, the plan does not address the growing number of clients seen at at the Gathering Place, as they weren't included in the city's count.

"I fear that as we move into similarly innovative projects and new money, unless we understand what our current reality, we could end up continuing to miss a segment of the population who really are at greatest risk of remaining homeless," she said.

Thompson said without a comprehensive analysis of the current state of homelessness in the city, it's hard to find where the gaps are.

"So we can applaud that we're making great strides forward in ending homelessness and we are in many respects," Thompson said.

"But again we have this chronic population that are not part of that count that are really not part of the city strategy."

No target for new builds identified in strategy

In the previous plan released in 2014, the city had set a goal of building 500 new homes to help fill the housing gap.

In the new initiative, there is no target for new builds.

"I think that this plan is really founded on excellent research on extensive community engagement and focuses on harnessing our ability to bring people together," Jamieson said.

"I think we're going to see really excellent results from this."

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