Regional councillor Pam Wolf plans to resurrect a motion shot down by Cambridge city councillors last month that sought to explore the idea of utilizing parking lots and other municipally-owned properties for affordable housing projects.
Wolf says she will bring a notice of motion forward at the Jan. 24 regional council meeting with the belief municipalities should be investigating every avenue possible to address the housing crisis.
In a move that had many people talking about Cambridge last month, and generally not in a favourable light, city council voted 5-4 against the idea proposed by Coun. Scott Hamilton.
Where council failed to come to an agreement, others around the region took notice and are now looking to capitalize on the idea.
"It's just a good idea that addresses a lot of concerns when building affordable housing, like location and accessibility," Wolf said over the phone.
"With all the support for this after it was defeated at Cambridge city council, we wanted to amplify this at the regional level and show that the government should be looking at all ideas for affordable housing."
Wolf notes that this is not the exact same motion as they don't want to restrict the search to just parking lots, due to the lack of regional lots available.
The motion has a seconder in Kitchener regional councillor Rob Deutschmann.
Hamilton, originally brought the idea of building housing units over under-used parking lots on a city level last month.
Since his motion was defeated at the Dec. 19 council meeting, Hamilton has received an outpouring of support from several municipalities, non-profits and religious organizations keen on bringing this idea forward in their own communities.
While feeling disappointed this will not be going forward in Cambridge, he thinks a good idea is a good idea regardless of where it's implemented.
"The fundamental purpose of every level of government and with the motion I brought is to help people," Hamilton said. "So if this starts in Waterloo, Kitchener, Toronto or wherever and it can help a lot of people, I think that's a win."
One of the key ingredients of the motion that makes it so appealing is the fact that the land will be owned by the municipality, so they would be able to maintain ownership and make sure these affordable units won't end up in the private sector.
Hamilton notes that the city does not control or govern over housing issues, but he feels this project would be an "amazing way" to get the city directly involved in creating affordable units.
"There's not many things that the city can do to increase affordable housing, granted, we can have a housing fund and we can create incentives for some developers like lowering development charges or fees, but one thing we can do is make land available for affordable housing," he said.
Some critics of the idea claimed that businesses in the downtown core would lose parking spots and business would suffer.
But Hamilton said some lots are not regularly full with some as low as 30 per cent occupied on any given day.
"There are some parking lots in the core of Galt, like the one on Wellington, which are never full. So you could afford to lose some spaces and fill some spaces with the cars of residents and you're probably still not yet up to capacity even at peak times," added Hamilton.
The Cambridge councillor remains hopeful that city council will have the opportunity to vote on this issue again if it has success in other parts of the province.
Wolf already has support from regional staff as they continue the search for innovative ways to help add to the region's limited affordable housing stock.
