Huron County council will allow a rent increase for an affordable housing development in Goderich.
Council received a request from Affordable Housing Solutions Inc., which owns a 12-unit development on Strang Court, to increase rent to over $1,200 a month.
The corporation's initial agreement with the county set rent at 80 per cent of an Alternate Average Market Rent, which was $650 at the time, and has since risen to $708. The agreement doesn't allow a review of rents until 2030, but Affordable Housing requested an early review, citing increased costs of operation and insurance.
Huron East Mayor Bernie MacLellan said they could meet somewhere in the middle.
"I'm not willing to go as high as what they've asked for, but I'd like to do something because, if more of these groups want to come along and build more affordable housing... I still think it's helping our overall community, to have these outside groups take on these responsibility themselves," he said. "I think it's reasonable to go the halfway point, because if we can get more groups involved, then the County and the taxpayers don't have to take on that responsibility in the future."
The staff report recommended keeping this status quo, but council opted to allow an increase to $1,000 to be in line with the maximum rent increase for the Huron County Housing Corporation.
Councillors asked if any of the residents were currently receiving subsidies to help with rent, and while staff said no, Director of Social and Property Services Barbara Hall told them financial help may not be available.
"Subsidies are possible, assuming we have funding available to provide subsidies," she told council. "We exhaust our subsidies each year, so anyone requiring subsidies would have to go on a waitlist quite frankly. We receive some funding through the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit and we exhaust it at the beginning of the year or whenever we receive that, so there would potentially be no subsidy for those particular households, so there is a difficulty there."
The rent increase would only be for new incoming tenants that are filling vacancies, not current tenants.