Blueprint rolls out for North End affordable housing project

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/02/2022 (1415 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of organizations have pulled together to flip an abandoned Winnipeg nail salon into affordable housing for Indigenous families and youth aging out of care.

“We’re very excited,” said Adrian Dingle, director of housing development for Raising the Roof, a Toronto-based national charity that purchased 573 Mountain Ave. through its Reside program.

“This is our first opportunity to bring it to Winnipeg and to use our model to create units in the North End.”

The building will be split into three suites: two larger units (three or four bedrooms each) and a single one bedroom for an individual exiting care. The bigger suites will be offered to Indigenous families at risk of being separated due to a lack of affordable housing.

Swinging hammers and sawing beams will be employees of local social enterprise Purpose Construction. The organization provides paid work and training to people experiencing employment barriers.

“We train Indigenous folk, refugees, newcomer Canadians, women, LGBTTQ+ people and folks exiting the justice system,” said Kalen Taylor, executive director at Purpose Construction.

The Mountain Avenue project will allow Purpose to train and pay 35 people, Taylor said.

Taylor said the organization has also worked with Raising the Roof to provide a Winnipeg perspective and to ensure the project addresses the needs of the North End neighbourhood.

“We know that there’s not enough affordable housing and, specifically, we know that there’s not enough larger affordable housing units with three-plus bedrooms for families.”

Despite being launched just four years ago, in 2018, Raising the Roof’s Reside program has a record of renovating houses for social housing, with more than 100 units in development across Canada, according to Dingle.

“For the last 10 years, we’ve worked in affordable housing all over the city, but it’s always been fixing up existing units,” Taylor said. “So for us, this is really an attempt to start looking face on at the lack of availability of affordable housing.”

Purpose Construction has several other larger projects on the go, including three housing developments on Magnus Avenue it bought from the City of Winnipeg for a dollar. However, those put on hold after supply chain issues caused the price of building materials to skyrocket.

Taylor said Purpose expects to begin work on that project in spring, and the Mountain Avenue project in summer.

Assiniboine Credit Union and the Jubilee Fund have agreed to help with financing.

“We’re very excited about it,” said Peter Cantelon, executive director of the Jubilee Fund. “Our focus… has always been on doing what we can to assist with poverty alleviation and poverty reduction. And housing is increasingly a big part of that.”

Dingle said such widespread and diverse partnerships are crucial to the success of the Reside program.

“It’s hugely important,” he said. “One angle I think about is that we’re a national charity. We don’t profess to be experts in the community of Winnipeg. So it’s really valuable for us to have local partners that can tell us about who it is that we’ll be housing and make sure that we can support them as well as we can.”

Among the organizations that have rallied to the cause are the North End Renewal Corp. (which will manage the property once complete) and Indigenous-led Fearless R2W, which will find prospective residents and support them on an ongoing basis.

Coun. Ross Eadie threw in his support for the project in his ward. “What really makes this one good is they’re looking at the ability for people to afford to live there in the long run.”

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca