Social housing needs $122 million in repairs

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Good morning and welcome to the Peterborough Currents newsletter, where we share our latest stories and catch you up on local news.

This week:

• Water walkers complete three-day trek around Pigeon Lake
• The cost of maintaining Peterborough’s social housing
• Pickleball development moves forward despite one councillor’s efforts to give it a second thought

Let’s get to it!

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Walking for the water in Michi Saagiig territory

Community members gathered in Michi Saagiig territory this Mother’s Day weekend to complete a three-day trek around Pigeon Lake.

“We’re walking for the water,” said organizer Liz Osawamick. “We’re walking for the seven generations, the children that are yet to be born … so that they may have clean drinking water.”

The Water Awareness Walks have been held in the Kawarthas region annually since 2010, when Osawamick and Elder Shirley Williams founded the tradition. 

Each year, the walkers choose a different local body of water to focus on. Usually it’s a lake, and the multi-day journey takes the walkers around its perimeter. Participants stop periodically to offer tobacco and prayers for the water.

Angela Wallwork participated in the water walk for the first time this year. “I’m reconnecting to my heritage, something that was taken away from my family,” she said.

Organizers said that the water walks have changed over time. In previous years, onlookers and passing motorists sometimes became confrontational, they said. But this year, the walk passed peacefully.

Organizers estimate 200 people participated over the course of the weekend.

Williams said the walks have succeeded in bringing attention to the importance of water. “It brought a lot of awareness, a lot of people are more aware of the harm to water with the chemicals,” she said. “We try and teach everybody different things, to conserve the water, because water is not going to be here if we don’t look after it, because we believe that water is life. As part of us.”

Journalist (and co-founder of Peterborough Currents!) Ayesha Lye attended the Water Awareness Walk to take photos and interview participants. Check out Ayesha’s story here.

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City’s social housing needs $122 million in capital repairs and maintenance over 20 years, council hears

“Sobering.” 

That’s how Mayor Jeff Leal described a new report that outlines how much it could cost the city to keep its portfolio of rent-geared-to-income (RGI) housing in good repair over the next two decades. Councillors received and discussed the report at a committee meeting on Monday.

Most of the social housing buildings in Peterborough are “in pretty good condition,” according to the consultant who presented the report. However, the buildings are now decades old, and so the city needs to start planning for how to keep them in good repair as they age.

And that’s likely to cost $122 million over 20 years, the consultant said.

The city’s community services commissioner Sheldon Laidman said there is an understandable focus on building new affordable housing right now, but that maintaining what we already have is also important.

“This report is really driving home how difficult it’s going to be” to keep our social housing in good repair, Laidman said. “How are we going to maintain what we have in light of declining senior government funding and our mandate to maintain the same number of units in aging infrastructure?”

The province requires the City of Peterborough to provide a combined 1,569 units of RGI housing across the city and county. 

Currently, that target is achieved by a few different means. According to the report, the city-owned Peterborough Housing Corporation (PHC) owns and operates 880 units of RGI housing. Independent non-profit housing providers provide a further 663 RGI units. And RGI rent supplements applied to private market apartments also count toward the target.

Municipalities weren’t always in charge of social housing. That responsibility was downloaded from the provincial government under the premiership of Mike Harris.

Coun. Kevin Duguay said he remembers when city council approved the construction of some of Peterborough’s social housing projects decades ago. At the time, there was no expectation that the municipality would be on the hook to maintain the buildings, he recalled. “There has been a shift in responsibility, clearly,” he said.

There are over 2,000 names on the waitlist for RGI housing in Peterborough right now, and the wait can be up to ten years, depending on the size of unit an applicant requires.

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Other stories to watch

PICKLEBALL AT BONNERWORTH

The plan to build 16 pickleball courts and a new parking lot at Bonnerworth Park is still on, despite efforts from Coun. Joy Lachica to convince her council colleagues to give the plan a second thought.

At a committee meeting on Monday May 13, Lachica brought forward a motion proposing that city councillors be granted final approval authority over the park’s redevelopment plans. Council approved the plan in principle last year but all the final details had yet to be determined at that time. Lachica’s motion asked that councillors be given a look at the final site plan and project budget, among other things, before construction begins. 

But Coun. Andrew Beamer, who was chairing the meeting, ruled Lachica’s motion out of order because council has already approved the pickleball development. By a slim one-vote majority, the rest of council agreed with Beamer that Lachica’s motion was out of order and therefore should not be debated.

GREENUP PLANT SALE

Peterborough GreenUP is hosting its annual spring plant sale at the Ecology Park Native Plant Nursery this Saturday, MAY 18, starting at 10:00 a.m. “This is a long-running event we’ve been doing for at least 25 years,” said Vern Bastable from GreenUP. “We have our full selection of trees and plants, but we also bring in a limited number of things specially for the opening sale to entice people to come out and support the park.”

PETERBOROUGH MUSICFEST

Peterborough Musicfest announced the lineup for its 2024 season of free outdoor concerts at Del Crary Park, and the acts range from Canadian country music star Tenille Towns to rock band I Mother Earth. Here’s the full lineup.

LEARN TO SQUARE DANCE

The Otonabee Squares are inviting community members to give square dancing a try this Saturday afternoon at a free demo dance at the Selwyn Outreach Centre.

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