Murphy Road affordable housing project stalled after funding program changes: proposed

Changes in a federal funding program have left an affordable housing project on Murphy Road stalled, the project’s manager says.

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“They were changing it every eight months,” Wellington Ridge Development’s Brian Mundt said about the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) former National Housing Co-Investment Fund.

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Two years ago, it offered to cover 95 per cent of costs.

Now, the renamed Affordable Housing Fund requires municipal or provincial governments to also contribute to getting the go-ahead, Mundt said.

How much money is needed from those other sources to unlock CMHC dollars — an Affordable Housing Fund grant program offers up to $75,000 per unit, and loans are also available based on business cases — isn’t clear, he said.

“But there has to be a commitment level, so it has to be a secure funding source.”

City council in late 2021 approved rezoning to allow the proposed six-storey, 46-unit build, then estimated at $12-million.

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Half its units were to be rented at 80 per cent the median market rent for at least 20 years, and geared to women age 60 and older.

Inflation has affected the price, but nothing else about the project has changed, Mundt said, noting there was CMHC funding to help with that rezoning application process.

But faced with complications in getting the funding to actually build, proponents — St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church owns the property and hired non-profit Wellington Ridge to help with the process — tried to consider other funding options, he said.

“The reality was that there really aren’t anything,” he said, adding hopes are that may change.

Lambton County Council this week endorsed a plan to pursue affordable and supportive housing projects at five county-owned sites, with the goal of opening the first within 18 months.

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“Obviously, with construction experience, 18 months is extremely difficult to do if you don’t have a lot of the preliminary work in place,” Mundt said, adding “in our opinion, the Greek Church is the closest project to be able to achieve that timeline,” and “we definitely feel we could achieve that timeline.”

But it’s not one of those county-owned sites, he said.

“Next step for us is how does the private sector contribute to the county’s housing strategy,” he said, adding hopefully there’ll be consideration of that when the county reports back about an implementation plan.

“I think it’ll be interesting to see what their approach is,” he said.

Mundt is also part of a group that’s been pushing for more supportive housing in the city and encouraged city council to donate part of its Victoria Street parking lot to the county for a possible project.

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That’s one of the five county-owned sites identified in the report county council endorsed from Flourish, a consulting company created by Ontario supportive housing provider Indwell.

Those projects would create 490 affordable housing units, 300 with supports for things like mental health and addictions counseling, the report says.

Council also voted to pursue federal and provincial funding for each of those project sites.

The Murphy Road project could also be enhanced or shrink depending on the available funding, Mundt said, but six stories and 46 units is the maximum size.

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley in 2021 called rezoning to allow the Murphy Road project one of city council’s most important decisions that term, before the 2022 election.

Since, the need for more affordable housing in Sarnia has increased, and Lambton County Council has made addressing the shortage its top priority.

-With files from Paul Morden

[email protected]

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