When asked by the Mercury Tribune a year ago what he thought 2023 would look like for öÏÓãÊÓƵapp, Mayor Cam Guthrie said he was optimistic, but that the city “would be entering 2023 in very, very difficult circumstances.â€
Those circumstances revolved mostly around the economic climate at that time, with interest rates at their highest in decades, high building costs and skilled labour shortages.
“We can’t ignore those in the community that are going to get hit by the storm just because we might have created a financial shelter very well for ourselves over the last eight years,†he said at the time, referring to the City of öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s own financial position.
“Honestly, my heart is just to try to actually help people that are in need, and so I’m hoping that not only council will come along with me, not only staff will come along, but that the community will come along with me as we have to have some conversations around helping the most vulnerable in our city.â€
Sitting down with the Mercury Tribune in his office at city hall on an unusually warm December morning, Guthrie said helping the city’s most vulnerable became one of the biggest issues for him and the city in 2023.
As is the case with any city, homelessness is not new to öÏÓãÊÓƵapp — however, Guthrie said things really came to a head this year when he learned the number of encampments for those with no place else to go had doubled.
A tent set up next to the former Baker Street city parking lot in downtown öÏÓãÊÓƵapp in late November.Â
Mathew McCarthy photo“Last year, we had about 10 encampments, and then (a few months ago) I was told we have 20. When I heard that we had a doubling of encampments, I was like, ‘whoa,’ †he said.
“I would say until this year, the trajectory that we were on, with the amount of people on our by-name list compared to the amount of supportive housing and/or traditional transitional housing and the shelter system all combined, we were a match. Now, there’s been a couple of times where there’s been capacity issues.â€
While underlying factors of the homelessness crisis stretch well beyond öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s city limits, Guthrie said local factors may be contributing to issues here, pointing to people being discharged from hospital or other care centres who don’t have a home to go back to, as an example.
“This is why we see the repeat people, the revolving door of people coming back into our emergency systems and shelter systems and so on, because they’re not getting the help that they need in discharge,†the mayor said.
“It’s not on purpose I don’t think, it’s just everyone’s trying to do their own thing for the good of the people that need it, and I just think there isn’t enough cross-pollination and cross-communication happening,†he later added.
While the city boosted funding to the County of Wellington — the level of government tasked with providing social services in the region — as part of the city’s 2024 budget, Guthrie said there is another player that is absent from these discussions and which needs to come to the table immediately: the provincial government.
“These are the continued downloading and underfunding from the province, under their jurisdiction that has now ended up at the doorstep of the property taxpayers in the city of öÏÓãÊÓƵapp, and I can assure you that’s it’s ending up at the doorstep of taxpayers across the province,†he said.
The mayor added while the city has added substantially to the number of supportive housing units available to those who otherwise have nowhere else to go, it doesn’t amount to much if the province doesn’t commit to funding it.
“The Kindle project is a perfect example of that,†he said, referring to the soon-to-be completed supportive housing development on Shelldale Crescent.
“We’re just a couple of months away from having that place ready, to cut the ribbon for 30 people that we can get off the streets, with the wraparound care that they need, and the province still has not answered us.â€
‘It does unfortunately feel like it has been a complete waste of a year’
Guthrie’s frustrations with the provincial government in 2023 spilled into more than just social services and tackling homelessness — it’s all housing.
Going into 2023, the City of öÏÓãÊÓƵapp was still looking to get a grasp of the implications of Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, and the changes it brought to the funds municipalities could collect from developers to pay for the infrastructure needed to service those new housing developments. A city staff report in July pegged the shortfall at $227 million over the next decade.
At the end of 2022, Guthrie said he was waiting for the provincial government to explain where the money was going to come from to pay for such infrastructure, especially with the city expected to meet provincial targets that would see housing built at double the rate seen in previous decades.
• ‘It didn’t make any sense at all’: Guthrie pushes back on Doug Ford’s öÏÓãÊÓƵapp housing comments
While there have been some smaller funding announcements, Guthrie and other mayors across the province still did not have an answer by the end of 2023 as to how exactly those funds would be made up.
“I would say that it had been quite a struggle, and not just for me as the mayor — it’s a struggle for staff, it’s a struggle for council, it’s a struggle for the development community,†he said.
“The lack of clarity and certainty that continued through 2023 from the provincial government around housing, really it does unfortunately feel like it has been a complete waste of a year.â€
While öÏÓãÊÓƵapp didn’t receive an answer on how to make up for nearly a quarter-billion dollars’ worth of development charges being taken away, the province did make changes to the city’s long-term plans.
In April, with no input from city hall, the provincial government raised maximum building heights in downtown öÏÓãÊÓƵapp, redesignated lands in the future öÏÓãÊÓƵapp Innovation District and rezoned properties for developments that had not appeared in front of council.
By September, Steve Clark was no longer a cabinet minister and replaced by Paul Calandra as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. A few weeks later, Calandra announced the aforementioned changes to öÏÓãÊÓƵapp’s official plan and others across the province would be reversed.
“With the new minister coming in, I would say that there is some real positive optimism that I have in working with him, and he seems very authentic in trying to fix things in that relationship,†Guthrie said of Calandra.
As far as housing goes, Guthrie says öÏÓãÊÓƵapp has kept up its end of the deal with the province, noting the 1,200-plus housing building permits issued by the city between January and the end of November was the highest number seen since 2016.
Despite previous comments by Premier Doug Ford, city council has also had a busy year when it comes to housing, approving rezoning and official plan amendments for various housing developments which, if all built, would see more than 1,900 new homes.
“Other than a couple of outliers, every application was approved unanimously,†Guthrie said.
Guthrie attributed this to “process changes, speeding things up, investing in technology and in staff, we’ve hired more staff in the planning department and housing department — so from a lens of what we’ve done, it’s been a really good year.†He added city staff have also been meeting the timelines legislated in the Planning Act, meaning development applications are now taking weeks or months, not years, to go from submission to being approved by council.
“It’s always a good time to remind everybody who is reading this that council approves units, and even though it’s one of the highest it’s ever been, we cannot force the developer to put a shovel in the ground,†Guthrie added.
The issues of homelessness and housing shortages will persist when the calendar changes over, so what does Mayor Cam Guthrie see for öÏÓãÊÓƵapp in 2024? What was his biggest regret for 2023, and how does he plan to address it next year? Come back to the öÏÓãÊÓƵapp Mercury Tribune on Dec. 31 to read more!
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