Tag: housing

COUNTY ASKS RENFREW FOR HELP IN BUILDING MODULAR HOUSING

Renfrew County is asking Renfrew Town Council to support them in the construction/building of forty modular units on the grounds of the Bonnechere Manor property.

The units will be of the prefabricated type, and will be a step towards alleviating some of the pressure felt by citizens when searching for affordable housing.

The target demographics are seniors not yet ready to enter long-term care/supportive accommodation and support workers who work either with these people, or with the people in the Manor proper.  A possibility exists that affordable housing for people not in the first two groups might also be made available through the project.

The County is asking the Town to waive the usual fees associated with the building of homes or housing, a number that’s in the area of some $58,000 in lost fees.

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BUILDING HOMES TO BEAT TARIFFS

Ontario’s municipalities want to build houses.  Lots of them.

They also want to tackle the problem of housing by taking existing buildings and infrastructure and bringing them up to speed so as to enhance efforts to add to affordable and supportive housing in the province.

All of this is ambitious, and all of this costs money, plenty of it.  And in the face of an economic downturn brought about by reckless and negligent trade policies originating south of the border, it may seem to be a hill with a slope that’s too tough to climb.

But that’s the point.

The Association of Municipalities in Ontario, or AMO, believes that this is precisely the time to beef up investment in housing starts and housing completions, along with upgrades to existing stock and buildings that seem to be lacking purpose.

The municipalities feel that this proposed injection of stimulus money, over and above current levels of funding, is just what the province and its citizens need in the face of troubling economic times.

It’s not a new concept, and it has worked before.

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HR LIASON: A PIÑATA THAT ISN’T THERE

Oh my God.

I can’t think of anything better to really say as the HR Liaison issue came up a third time, and for a third time it was like wading in a pool full of absolute muck.

I’ve never encountered brick-think on such a scale as I witnessed Tuesday night at the Renfrew Town Council meeting.

These people seemingly have a huge degree of difficulty when it comes to determining how Stage 3 grievances are to be heard.  It’s not the most complicated of things, but you’d never know it from sitting in this room for what seems like hours talking about the same thing over and over and over again, all the while cancelling out options with votes as the back-and-forth debate rages, and heads shake.

All of the very worst things that come to mind when criticizing Council come to the forefront on this particular issue.  Add to that the usual ambiguity and imperfection from certain staff by way of explanations that don’t address the question.

It’s like watching a blind-folded kid swinging wildly at a piñata, only there’s no piñata.  Or if you prefer, taking a bunch of cats for a walk without a leash. Walking through a cornfield?

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COUNCIL SCRAPS OVER HR COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP

The background to this is fairly simple.

Council, until recently, would receive reports from the various committees and departments that undertook the business of the municipality.  One of those committees was an HR Committee.  The head of that committee would be part of any employee grievance process.

When Council transitioned to a Committee of the Whole format, those individual committees went by the wayside.  As for human resources matters, Council still had an HR Liaison in place, but that person wasn’t formally designated as being the replacement for the “committee” that made up the town’s part of a grievance complaint.  That’s a requirement in the collective agreement that exists between the town and its employees, and a requirement that’s not currently being fulfilled after the disbanding of the committee structure.

Staff recommended that, to close this gap, a motion was needed designating what this grievance team might look like, and several options were tendered to Council, and one of those options was recommended.

In my opinion, the staff recommendation was flawed in the first place.

It may have cemented or concretized the protocol as it currently exists, but that’s not a good enough reason to hammer forward with it.

I’m talking, again, about what form of council/staff representation takes the reins in a human resources situation involving a contract grievance brought forward by an employee.

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“IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT IT COSTS, IT’S GOTTA BE DONE.”

“It doesn’t matter what it costs, it’s gotta be done.”  

I have to circle back to a comment made by Renfrew councillor Andrew Dick in the most recent council meeting of October 22, 2024.  It concerned the lighting available at Renfrew’s Ma-Te-Way ballfields.

The councillor was reflecting a certain frustration with the lighting situation at Ma-Te-Way, particularly in the face of a Parks and Recreation report that indicated that all underground electrical infrastructure outside at Ma-Te-Way was in a condition of complete failure and degradation.  So much so that contractors have advised that the lights dependant upon the proper functioning of that infrastructure not be turned on until the failed aspects of it be replaced.

Council voted to proceed with an engineering study by engineering consultants JP2G that would culminate in recommendations as to how to proceed.  The only problem with that, and of particular concern to Councillor Dick, was the fact that the engineering review wouldn’t be completed until well after the 2025 baseball season had concluded.  In other words, no lights in 2025.

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ONTARIO’S BIG CITY MAYORS ASK PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT FOR HELP.

Ontario’s Big City Mayors group got together recently, as thy do, and no surprise, homelessness and the impact that it has on their communities was top-of-mountain when it came to topics under discussion.

When these discussions were completed, the mayors delivered a statement, as they do, but one that was more of a direct public appeal to the provincial government to do something, anything, to lift the onerous pressures homeless persons have on Ontario’s cities.

The folks in Pembroke would be able to appreciate that better than most, I’d say.  Far better than places like Renfrew, I’d warrant.

The BIg City Mayors had plenty to say about homelessness, some of it good, much of it the same old tired ideas that have led to nothing but have only shifted the problem onto some other area of society or provincial government responsibility.

One thing brought up, and it’s all the rage now across the country, is the idea of involuntary treatment for people addicted to drugs and who are homeless.  There are always segments of every population that are more difficult to manage or service for a myriad number of reasons, and with the topic of homelessness, these are the types that create the most onerous burden in terms of dealing with them from a police, public health, and social services point of view.  Throw in mental health and you’ve got one of the primary reasons, aside from bank greed, that there’s a homeless crisis to begin with.

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HOMELESS: DOING A BETTER JOB AND SAVING A WHACK OF CASH WHILE DOING IT.

I did a video story earlier in the week regarding homelessness in Renfrew and the surrounding area, a story that had elements of criticism, as well as praise, within it.  I followed that up with an article giving credit and encouragement to some of the stakeholder groups or agencies (in this case police) that have made meaningful and positive contributions to the effort around homelessness.

Today, in what will likely be my final kick at this can, I wish to offer solutions, not of my own making, but crafted by folks living in other parts of North America and involving the very same issue.  I don’t want to come across as exclusively critical of the efforts, or non-efforts that I see as I learn more about this topic.

So I want to throw some ideas out there for an alternative approach, ideas not originated by me, but noted by me as having some real honest-to-goodness potential.  Unlike some politicians that are exclusively critical, I’d like to show up with some ideas about how to make things better.

One effort, in Austin, Texas, is operated by a group that identifies as Mobile Loaves and Fishes.  If you’re Christian, you may recognize the key element of that title from something you may have experienced in Scripture, a story we’ve all heard many times along the way.  The story of Jesus feeding the assembled masses who gathered to hear him along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  The Mobile part of the title alludes to the fact that this group operates mobile food trucks as well as the community I’m talking about.

I’m not here to talk about the food truck.  But I will speak to their Community First! Village concept, something now in operation and humming along rather nicely.

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“THERE’S NOTHING ON MY BELT THAT WILL SOLVE ADDICTION / HOMELESSNESS”

In preparation for a piece I did yesterday on local homelessness, I came across a CBC documentary (PROJECT PURPLE) that outlined the effort being made in the Pembroke area to tackle the homelessness / addiction crisis that has made that Ottawa Valley community a hotspot for drug overdose and all the attending problems associated with dealing with the homeless.

Within that documentary was a clip of Inspector Steph Neufeld, Commander, Ontario Provincial Police Pembroke Detachment.  And what he said was like sweet music finally reaching the ears of an audience starved for meaningful and humane action to a crisis that is upon us and may well get worse should we continue to follow the boilerplate responses of the past.

Inspector Neufeld has it completely right on so many points, but what jumped out at me was the profound statement made by a ranking police officer.

“There’s nothing on my belt that will solve addiction.  There’s nothing that will solve homelessness.  But do we have a part to play to support our members?”

And as he continued, it was clear that the answer was “yes,” and further, that it must be a community effort, involving several agencies working in concert, and in a manner that is novel, innovative, inspired, and effective.  In other words, sometimes you have to step beyond the lines, or, if you will, get out of the box.  As in, if it ain’t working, fix it.

And by fixing it, we mean taking new approaches that free us from the straight jacket of prior, and often failed models of response.

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