Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services seeking land for more affordable housing in Kenora

One of the organizations behind a planned affordable housing build in Kenora, Ont., says the project will not only provide a home for over two dozen people but is also designed to help tenants find stable housing and other social supports.

But the executive director of Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services says the 30-unit project just scratches the surface of the amount of affordable housing the city, located about 500 kilometres west of Thunder Bay, needs.

"They are moving in the right direction," Justin Marchand said. "But we need ... hundreds of more housing units in Kenora, so there's just a huge pent up demand."

"We know from the local community ... that, right now, today, there's a need for over 600 homes."

The Kenora District Services Board is also moving ahead with another 28-unit build. The social services board along with the province are also partnered with Marchand's group for the 30-unit project. He said that the provincial government came quickly on board this year with funding.

The lack of affordable housing in Kenora has been really thrust into the spotlight with the Kenora District Services Board closing its social services hub, including the emergency shelter, for about a month and a half in order to do renovations and evaluations over safety and programming it says are needed. That closure displaced dozens of people who used the shelter.

But housing advocates have been pushing for more affordable places to live for much longer. A long-standing group called Making Kenora Home held a community meeting in July about the issue, while the city itself held a pair of meetings later in the summer.

A March 2019 fire also destroyed a downtown building that social services board officials said housed about 70 vulnerable people.

The Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services project will serve as transitional housing, giving tenants a place to stay while they work to secure more permanent accommodations. Marchand said that they will partner with local organizations to help each tenant access other services they need everything from helping someone get government identification so they can access healthcare, to addictions support and traditional healing.

"It really is individualized," he said.

Accessible, affordable land

For Marchand, who heads the not-for-profit development organization, the biggest asset he's looking for is land on which to build more affordable places to live.

"One of our biggest barriers to development is actually access to suitable, affordable land," he said. "That's something that the City of Kenora and the Kenora District Services Board has helped us out with with respect to the land for this development."

"But we need more land that is serviced, that is accessible, that's affordable, that is adequate and will be supportive to the residents who will be ... needing that housing."

Marchand said detailed design work for the 30-unit build will be done this fall, while construction is scheduled to start in the spring of 2020. He said, if all goes well, the facility could open either late in 2020 or the spring of 2021.