Stratford Affordable Housing Alliance sending weekly petition to council

One grassroots community group is stepping up its efforts to encourage the city to address the housing crisis through an ongoing petition.

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The Stratford Affordable Housing Alliance (SAHA) is planning to send 100 signatures to council every week asking for a proportionally mixed income (PMI) affordable housing plan.

“Essentially, we’re asking that the city meaningfully collaborate with the public to begin development and implementation of a comprehensive, truly affordable housing plan,” co-founder Niki Andre said.

As Andre explained, a PMI plan would be based on how many Stratford residents there are in specific income bracket. If 10 per cent of the population is in a certain income range, for example, then 10 per cent of housing in the community via this plan would be affordable to them.

The Stratford Affordable Housing Alliance represents people from a range of income levels – from those on guaranteed income supplements or Ontario Works to those earning $100,000 per year but still facing challenges when it comes to housing. SAHA officials would like to see the local plan be based on the federal government’s definition of affordable housing, which means not more than 30 per cent of a household’s gross income is spent on housing.

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The petition is asking for “city council to commission a comprehensive, publicly accessible inventory of all city-owned land and property, and create a land and property bank for the implementation of a (plan) that centers (on) community land trusts.”

According to the Windsor Law Center for Cities,a Community Land Trust (CLT) is a non-profit corporation that obtains and holds land and housing for the benefit of the community in which it exists.” The Canadian Network of Land Trust contends this approach “(allows) housing and other properties owned by CLTs remain affordable to the community, forever.”

“If (we) set up land trusts, then people feel safe that it can’t be pulled out from under them because you can create parameters around how the . . . leases work for both affordable housing and for farming and all other kinds of social benefits as well. . . so that forever, in perpetuity, you have security that it is always affordable,” Andre said.

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In asking for an inventory, Andre said the alliance is looking for city-owned properties, apart from the much-discussed Grand Trunk site, that could potentially be used for housing.

“We know that there is city-owned land and property, but we don’t have a publicly accessible inventory, so we’re not clear on what land we have and what buildings we have to work with. One of the things that we’ve learned from talking to other community (groups) is they look at everything as a potential for housing,” said Andre, adding the alliance would like this list before any new housing developments are approved.

SAHA sends its first batch of signatures before the holiday break and will be sending a new batch every week until they run out of names. While they will keep the petition open, Andre recognized there were limitations to how many signatures they can possible obtain.

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“Places like Toronto get 3,000 signatures for climate action things, and they’re yelling it from the rooftops and getting everything they ask for. I would be over the moon if we get 1,000. I’m sure there’s far more than that who wants this,” she said.

SAHA is also releasing weekly videos to educate the community about land trust on its YouTube channel, and is hoping to have a delegation to council in the near future.

“We don’t have the power or the resources to change people’s situations today, but we’re hoping that long term – not the super long term – and in the medium long term, that we can create sustainable solutions in Stratford and beyond, ”Andre said.

“We believe, as (the federal government) says in our national housing strategy – as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights says, as the 1946 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25, says – that suitable and affordable housing is a human right. And right now we say it, but when you look around, we don’t see that reflected. . . and I think that that’s because we have sort of lost the plot here,” she said.

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