CBRM to decide on $5M in federal housing projects next week

Cape Breton Regional Municipality will spend up to $5 million in federal money on affordable housing, and Mayor Amanda McDougall said Tuesday that a decisionabout which projects to fund will be made next week.

Residents protested earlier this month after council voted down one of four local proposals for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) money.

Council held an emergency meetingdays later and decided to forward all four to CMHC to see which ones were eligible, despite having determined that only one met all of the federal criteria.

Under CMHC'srapid housing initiative, council was told applications had to be submitted to CMHC by March 15 and a decision was needed by March 31. But McDougallsaid Tuesdaythat was just to make sure council had enough time to meet the tight deadlines.

"Our intention was to put pressure on CMHC to make sure that we got feedback from them by the end of March," she said. "We need to have these projects up and running by May, so this is all in the hands of CMHC right now, providing us information back. We will have a meeting next week to have a final decision."

CMHC has project funding that proponents apply for directly, and it has a cities stream that allows municipalities to direct funding towardpriority projects.

This is the first time CBRM has been included in the cities funding stream.

McDougall said the resulting delay and talks with CMHC will likely mean thatmore than one project willqualify for the cities stream funding.

"The applications are in. CMHC is going to be doing some work back and forth to tweak applications, make sure they are correct," she said.

"I'm fully, fully confident that we will have projects decided upon very, very soon."

The project details could stillbe changed before the applications are finalized, McDougall said.

Staff from the municipality will meet with CMHC officials on Thursday to go over the results and will then take information back to all four proponents, she said.

After that, council will have to decide which project or projectsto put forward for federal funding.

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