One of the candidates in this fall's Elliot Lake City Council election race, Gary Kirk, is a strong advocate of the municipal government's responsibility to promote and provide affordable local housing.
With the provincial election now in the rear view mirror, Kirk says it is time to start speaking about the municipal vote this fall, and specifically what local issues candidates should focus on, including the direction in which the city should ultimately be headed.
"One thing I think is a major issue to be addressed is the needs of people to have an affordable home to rent," Kirk said.
He has often pointed to tiny homes on social media for their partial solution to the housing shortage, and he believes the little structures can meet our local needs.
"As we move up and down the political ladder, we hear the words 'affordable housing' very often from our federal and provincial governments; usually, the phrase has the words 'lack of' as part of the sentence," Kirk added.
He says it is the municipal government's job to address those housing needs and to take advantage of federal and provincial grants to satisfy them.
Kirk feels the need is real for a lot of seniors.
"We have many seniors in this city who are on a fixed pension and OAS income. Some are not lucky enough to have investments to fall back on, and they live month to month on that cheque," he said.
Kirk noted we also have people with special needs, who are running a spectrum of challenges that have them collecting Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) funding. These include people who are challenged by stairs or by addictions and other societal woes.
"We have a sheltering system for people who have been in abusive relationships who need support to get back to normalcy, and part of that has to be a supervised transition while in their own space," he said.
Kirk also asks where the professional people we all depend on can be expected to hang their hats. That includes visiting doctors at St. Joseph's General Hospital or new nurses and technicians there who are lucky to find a room to rent after their hotel allowance runs out.
We also have people who work minimum wage jobs, and with rentals being in short supply and prices substantially higher over the past two years, this group is finding affordability is a big issue.
As for the sale of increasingly scarce city-owned serviced building lots, Kirk says the attention has been focused on building medium to high priced homes on that land, something he believes is needed, and he's in favour of.
At the same time, Elliot Lake Retirement Living is hoping to advance its sometime Spine Road project, which is expected to offer new apartments, a few of them set as affordable housing.
At the latest reckoning, the rental apartments at the "Source" built on Newfoundland Walk are structured with one and two bedrooms and monthly rents priced between $1,200 to $1,600. That makes them far above the range of the people needing support.
Kirk says, unfortunately, there is little effort to acknowledge or attempt to provide for the people most in need since that approach doesn't provide the right profit margin and makes it difficult to attract investors for building.
He cites the work of Marcel LeBrun in New Brunswick, a man making an effort to deliver affordable geared to tiny income homes in the Fredericton area.
He refers to a report by CBC News in Fredericton titled Big help for tiny housing project in Fredericton.
Kirk also notes projects underway in Kingston which support homeless veterans, along with others being developed in Alberta and Saskatchewan, as in Students build tiny homes to tackle Alberta First Nation's housing crisis.
Other funding sources for building affordable housing include Habitat for Humanity which supports affordable housing initiatives across the country and Wounded Warriors Canada, which supports housing for disabled veterans.
Kirk says other resources may be untapped.
"Locally in Elliot Lake, we have the churches and service clubs, and certainly we have an abundance of people who have time on their hands who know which end of a hammer works best,” he said.
"We likely have students who might do well to learn something in the way of a trade."
Housing projects typically receive something in the neighbourhood of 60 per cent of their funding from senior levels of government.
Kirk believes that number could increase to 70 per cent.
The city owns land used for this effort, which would not affect areas adjacent to new builds, such as in areas like Mississauga Road across from Maplegate or the front area at Senator and Pearson before entering the dog park.
Both of those areas are on existing transit lines and have municipal services available to support the hubs.
As a test case, Kirk estimates that a cluster of 20 tiny homes could be built on concrete pads.
He says they would be set up as hubs, with each unit having a small amount of storage, an attached deck and a little garden plot.
One floor living space for couples and singles would be approximately 300 sq. feet.
In the New Brunswick models, each fully appointed home costs approximately $40,000.
If $50,000 is used as a yardstick instead, the project would be within budget for a $1M build for 20 units.
Of that $1M, presuming 60 or 70 per cent is derived from grants, Kirk says donations could be solicited from service providers such as Eastlink to create an internet hub for efficient and inexpensive internet service for the hubs thus created.
Rents would be charged based on income available to the build and could be financed externally with rent used to repay the loan, the city, or a designated non-profit like Algoma and District Social Administration Board (ADSAB), which could handle collection, care and maintenance.
Kirk wants a practical plan structure laid out to be developed by the council with city support and, likely, a group of citizens wishing to be involved as a committee.
He believes it's all doable and meets a very pressing community need.
It also requires planning and project management and must be an inclusive effort embraced by the whole of Elliot Lake.