City’s Homeless Initiative Supervisor pleased with National Housing Strategy

Nov 23, 2017 | 9:45 AM

The city’s Homeless Initiative Supervisor is excited with the federal government’s newly announced National Housing Strategy.

Katherine Schmidt says the strategy should help the at-risk population.

“They are managing with low income as long as they are in subsidized housing or affordable housing that is below market value. Some of the strategies that the federal government’s coming out with are going to meet some of those needs, they are talking about looking after 300,000 Canadians that are facing that affordability challenge.”

She says locally, more affordable housing is needed and hopes that some of the funding will trickle down for new builds.

“So, we are going to be looking for opportunities to actually have money come into our city for builds and we are also looking forward to some of these other strategies that they are also talking about where potentially there is going to be some housing benefits directly to support individuals in existing housing. So I think of that is going to be opportunities for our city.”

The 40-billion-dollar plan includes a promise to introduce legislation to make housing a fundamental right.

-with files from The Canadian Press

by Glory Przekop