The Municipality of Chatham-Kent will continue to see more people and new businesses coming here in 2024, predicts Mayor Darrin Canniff.
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“I think there’s going to be a lot of growth, a lot of new things happening,” he said during a year-end interview.
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“There’s lots of industry looking at Chatham-Kent, so it’s a huge opportunity for us in 2024 and beyond,” he said.
Canniff points to the growth this past year as an indicator of more to come, citing the fact more than 200 businesses opened across the municipality in 2023.
“People are identifying Chatham-Kent as a place they want to be,” the mayor said.
Relative to other larger municipalities across Ontario, Chatham-Kent has more affordable housing, he said.
“We were a best kept secret years ago, but not anymore.”
When it comes to building new homes, the Ontario government has assigned targets to various municipalities under its strong mayors plan to meet an ambitious goal of building 1.5 million new homes across the province by 2031 to address a housing supply crisis.
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“We are leading the province,” Canniff said.
According to provincial data, the government sets a target of 81 housing starts for Chatham-Kent in 2023; there were 351 housing starts.
“We’re at 430 per cent of our housing target for 2023,” Canniff said. “No other community in Ontario is closed to that.”
Ontario communities are taking notice of Chatham-Kent, the mayor said.
During a recent Ontario’s Big-City Mayors meeting, the chair, Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward was speaking about the provincial housing targets and specifically asked about Chatham-Kent, he said.
“We’re on the radar in a lot of ways in a good sense,” Canniff said. “People are recognizing this is a place to be.”
The mayor acknowledges the increase in interest rates for mortgages has slowed down housing locally.
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“But, we’re primed for when the interest rates start coming down for a lot of people to move here,” he added.
Chatham-Kent needs more residents to help fill vacant jobs, Canniff said.
He recently spoke with an employer who is of the opinion Chatham-Kent has a negative unemployment rate.
The employer told him, “I need 40 people in my place and I can’t find them.”
Canniff said the message he’s been getting from many businesses is they want to hire more people.
He pointed out there are hundreds of jobs listed online at www.chathamkentjobs.com.
“In order to expand from a job’s perspective, we need more people to fill them.”
On the flip side, affordable housing and homelessness are the biggest challenges Chatham-Kent continues to face, Canniff said.
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There are 1,100 people on a municipal waiting list for affordable housing, he said.
Although the municipality has a number of affordable housing projects on the go, Canniff said, “We are completely contingent upon federal and provincial funding to help build affordable housing.”
He said a proposed project by Indwell Community Homes, a Christian-based charity, to build 95 supported housing units on the former St. Agnes elementary school site in Chatham, would have put a tooth in that waiting list.
However, a $14 million application to the federal rapid housing initiative was turned down earlier this year.
“The federal government didn’t come through,” Canniff said, adding Chatham-Kent was prepared to spend $9.5 million on the project.
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Growing homelessness continues to create angst in the community, particularly with homeowners living near a temporary emergency shelter on Murray Street in the Tecumseh Park neighborhood in Chatham.
Council recently adopted new guidelines for selecting the site of a future shelter that calls for the facility not to be located in a residential neighborhood interior or next to elementary schools, parks, splash pads, wading pools and licensed childcare centers.
Council also wants to see more public consultation when it comes to selecting a shelter site.
Noting a new plan on addressing homelessness is coming in 2024, Canniff said, “We’ve looked at what every other community is doing and we want to come out with the most progressive way to deal with it.”
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