Ontario requested a $5-million contribution, but Lambton County’s Housing Services wants to move ahead with building as many as 50 new units of affordable housing on county-owned parkland on Kathleen Avenue in Sarnia.
Ontario requested a $5-million contribution, but Lambton County’s Housing Services wants to move ahead with building as many as 50 new units of affordable housing on county-owned parkland on Kathleen Avenue in Sarnia.
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A county council committee Wednesday backed the plan to proceed with design and construction of the $16.5-million affordable apartment building project with increased borrowing to make up for the lack of provincial money.
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The Kathleen Avenue project is the “closest to shovel-ready” of five potential sites the county has identified for new affordable and supportive housing, said Valerie Colasanti, Lambton’s social services general manager.
“We put in a request to the provincial government for $5 million and we were not successful,” she told the committee. “Our recommendation is that we would still like to move forward with the project. However, we would continue to apply for both federal and provincial dollars as the project moves forward.”
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The committee’s recommendation to move ahead with the two-to-three-storey building with between 30 to 50 units heads to county council May 1.
Council declared in 2023 that responding to homelessness and the need for more affordable housing were its top priorities.
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley asked if other sites could be considered after the province’s funding decision.
“I am concerned about the concentration of social housing, and Kathleen (Avenue) is probably the epicenter of all the social housing in the city,” he said. “I haven’t sold on that it’s good to concentrate social housing.”
A section of Kathleen Avenue holds a large number of county-owned social housing units built decades ago.
Colasanti said the Kathleen Avenue land was selected because “it’s shovel-ready” and “the other projects are a fair distance from being ready.”
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Some other potential sites the county is considering for new affordable housing aren’t owned by Lambton, and some may require rezoning and environmental studies, she said.
“There’s quite a bit of work to do on any of the other projects,” Colasanti said.
“We heard there was new funding announced yesterday in the federal budget, but if we don’t have a shovel-ready project, we won’t be able to receive any of those dollars,” she said.
The county is working with the city on zoning for the Kathleen Avenue site and a request for proposals has gone out for an architect, the county said.
Later in the meeting, the committee backed Bradley’s request that the county organize a virtual “town hall” meeting in coming weeks to share information and answer questions from the public on efforts to add new affordable housing and provide services for the homeless.
“We need to do more on the communication side, and we need to allow the public to have more engagement directly with us,” Bradley said. “If this one works, I would hope we could do it on a regular basis.”
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