By Halima Mautbur
Housing activists are skeptical about a redevelopment plan for LeBreton Flats that would include low-income units.
Bruce Burns, the director of program development at the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation, says he “doubts whether there’s enough commitment to really provide it.”
The National Capital Commission (NCC) is selling 4.4 hectares of land in the southeast corner of LeBreton Flats for residential development .
According to the subdivision plan of LeBreton Flats agreed to by the NCC and the city, 25 per cent of residential areas must be used for low-income housing. The NCC wants about 800 housing units on the southeast corner of the area, which should yield about 200 subsidized units.
However, the plan also states that if the land is not obtained for low-income housing within five years, the NCC must either sell it to the city to have the affordable housing built, or develop the lands.
Burns said he asked NCC officials if they would give preference to developers who provided a timetable for the completion of the low-income housing and the answer was no.
“The NCC apparently has a mandate to obtain the greatest financial return on the sale of any land,” he says, warning that the “highest bidder will not provide affordable housing.”
But Eva Schacherl, a spokesperson for the NCC, says the subsidized housing provision is a mandatory criteria for developers, who will have to find “creative ways” to include it in their designs. One way or another, 200 subsidized units won’t meet Ottawa’s demand.
Karilyn Warr, the applications co-ordinator with the Social Housing Registry of Ottawa-Carleton, says the waiting list for low-income housing has 12,000 names, more than half of which are families .
Warr says the average wait for housing is between five and eight years. And with the looming federal election, Burns says he and others will continue to lobby for affordable housing.
“I think that candidates from the federal riding should be questioned where they stand on it and what they would do about it,” he says.
The corner of the site that is for sale is currently being decontaminated from industrial pollution and a fire that ravaged the area a century ago. It should be fully decontaminated by the end of the year, says Schacherl.
Archaeological digs are also supposed to be finished before construction will begin in 2006.
The deadline for design proposals is April 8, and later this year a shortlist of three potential buyers will have their designs presented to the public for input. The developer chosen to build the housing units will be announced early next year. The first residents could be moving in by 2007.