Lambton County looks to create new units at existing social housing sites

Extra space at Lambton County social housing buildings in Sarnia could be converted into two additional residential apartments under a proposal going to Wednesday’s county council meeting.

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Council is asked to approve spending about $300,000 to create a new one-bedroom unit and a new bachelor unit using storage space at one building and part of a large lobby at a second.

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The Canada-Ontario Community Housing Initiative — funded by the provincial and federal governments — will be asked for 75 per cent of the cost of the renovations.

County housing services staff developed the plan following county council’s decision in July to declare affordable housing and shelter its number one priority.

Like many communities, Sarnia and the rest of Lambton County are struggling with a shortage of affordable housing.

A 2021 study found 3,890 local residents needed affordable rental housing and in September the county’s homelessness outreach team had contact with 66 individuals who slept outside at some point that month.

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“I had a meeting with my management team and we were talking about the affordable housing crisis and options for us to consider,” said Melisa Johnson, acting manager of Lambton’s housing services.

One of the supervisors brought up an unused storage room on second floor of a 48-unit social housing building at 124 Queen St., she said.

“That kind of got the ball rolling and got us thinking about other opportunities,” Johnson said.

They included a large resident lounge at the county’s 91-unit social housing building at 230 Capel St.

It’s proposed that 500 square feet of the 1,600-square-foot lounge be converted into a new one-bedroom apartment.

The storage room on Queen Street is about 450 square feet, which is the size of a typical bachelor apartment in the building.

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The two renovations projects are expected to cost about $150,000 each.

An architect confirmed the spaces in the two buildings “are appropriate in size and location to be converted into a residential unit,” the housing services department said in a report.

If an application to the federal-provincial community housing initiative isn’t successful, housing staff will look to other provincial programs for the funding, the report says. The balance of the cost of the renovations would come from existing county funds.

“We’re hoping that this is just the start,” Johnson said. “If those two units are successful, we’re going to look at doing a larger review of our entire portfolio to see if there are other opportunities.”

Lambton County currently owns 830 social housing units.

The number of additional affordable units that may be created from existing space isn’t expected to be “significant,” but “maybe we can add another two, three, four units down the road,” Johnson said.

“It’s really a cost-effective way of adding units,” compared to the typical cost of new social housing construction which can be $300,000 per unit, she said.

The projects at Queen and Capel streets were endorsed in October by a committee of county council.

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