St. Albert councillors appear set on negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the St. Albert Housing Society and reviewing the city’s outside-agency funding policy.
Council discussed three motions relating to the housing society at the Sept. 6 meeting, after receiving the report on council and stakeholder consultations that were completed over the summer.
On June 20, councillors had asked administration to solicit feedback from councillors and various stakeholders about a trio of recommendations: that a city emergency/crisis funding policy under development include parameters for program service duplication, that administration review the policy on outside-agency funding and that administration work to negotiate a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the housing society about how the municipal grant is spent.
While council unanimously approved the first two recommendations Sept. 6, it was the third recommendation about a memorandum of understanding that spurred the most debate.
At issue is the fact the city purchased the land for Big Lake Pointe, a housing complex in the city’s west end that has affordable-housing units, giving the housing society a mortgage-free ownership of 15 units at 12 Nevada Place.
An administrative backgrounder indicates the society also gets an annual operating grant – $102,090 in 2016 – but has spent some money on purchasing two additional units already and is setting aside $97,000 for 2016 to fund the purchase of additional units.
That doesn’t sit well with councillors, although former housing society director Tash Taylor said in June the grant money wasn’t being used to operate the housing units, but was rather being directed to administer and raise funds for social programming and supports like the HomeConnection program.
There is currently no memorandum of understanding between the city and the society about specifically how that money should be spent. Some councillors have argued the funding should be used to help the society transition to being self-sustaining, and should be coming to an end.
“We should have had this MOU right from the get go, when we were giving away millions of dollars of land and then agreeing to fund their operations,” Coun. Sheena Hughes said. “This is not a fun motion to bring forward, but it’s a necessary motion.”
The issue is whether the city should be funding affordable housing at all, instead of leaving it to the higher levels of government, and whether this was even in the city’s mandate.
In the past few years, the provincial government has indicated to seniors housing foundations like Sturgeon Foundation in this region that their mandates would expand to include all affordable housing, not just for seniors. Federal and provincial funding for affordable housing will flow through those foundations.
“We’re committing to ongoing municipal dollars, when it should be the province and federal government’s purview,” Coun. Wes. Brodhead said, adding he supported a memorandum but would ultimately like to see the city’s operating grants to the housing society come to an end.
Coun. Tim Osborne opposed the motion, questioning the assumption that a not-for-profit organization’s value to the community should be measured solely in terms of dollars.
“It feels like it’s changing the rules in the middle of the game,” he said. “When the previous council granted funding, there wasn’t something that said we have control over how you use the rental revenue.”
The apparent friction between council and the housing society is complicated by a decision earlier this year in Court of Queen’s Bench, when Justice Donna Shelley ruled the city erred in its property tax assessments at 12 Nevada Place for 2014 and 2015, and quashed the decision of the city’s assessment review board.
