The puzzle pieces of supportive housing and urban renewal continue to fall into place along what used to be a suffering stretch of east Hamilton streetscape.
Indwell is adding 32 apartments to the 12 it has already built on Ottawa Street North at Cannon Street East in Hamilton.
Indwell’s four-storey, 32-unit building is rising on the Ottawa Street North lot at Cannon Street East where a shuttered bar that was the source of neighbourhood complaints once stood.
The future residence, which also features street-level commercial space, will add to the 12 apartments Indwell has already built in a refurbished brick building next door that includes The Cannon coffee shop.
This recipe of increased density has already made the area more vibrant, says Graham Cubitt, a director of projects and development with Indwell, which specializes in deeply affordable and supportive housing.
“This is exactly what the city needs. And it’s supportive housing, which is contributing to long-term stability for tenants,” Cubitt said. “So it’s the solution to both homelessness and urban development.”
The second phase of the Ottawa Street project is one of several that Indwell and its partners in a coalition called Hamilton is Home have in the works or already under construction in the city.
The collaborative, which formed in 2020 to share resources and expertise in securing limited government funding for affordable housing, has committed to 3,000 units and aspires to build 2,000 more by 2030.
The development push is in response to a housing affordability crisis marked by long waits for subsidized units, packed emergency shelters and people on the street.
“We’re going to dream big,” says Cubitt, chair of Hamilton is Home.
A key ingredient of that ambition is federal funding as Ottawa evaluates applications to its new agency, Build Canada Homes, which the Liberal government has seeded with $13 billion.
Hamilton is Home’s combined proposals tick the boxes, satisfying such federal priorities as “scale, partnership and portfolio,” Cubitt said.
“We’re covering all the bases,” he said, noting projects include affordable, supportive and ownership housing. “We prioritize every group, every demographic.”
The affordability question
Hamilton is Home has sites across Hamilton with plans, in some cases, transforming rundown buildings or underutilized parking lots.
The projects range from fourplexes to 200-unit-plus apartment blocks; from supportive housing for those who need assistance to moderate rentals for priced-out workers.
Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes hopes to ease the affordability crunch by turning single-family homes, including this bungalow at 138 Paling Ave., into fourplexes.
The deepest level of affordability is through the rent-geared-to-income (RGI) model, which is no more than 30 per cent of household income or what social assistance rates allow. RGI units are the bedrock of CityHousing, for instance.
Supportive housing can include a variety of services for residents, whether it’s meal planning, addiction treatment or mental-health counselling. A focus of Indwell, it’s increasingly seen as the solution to chronic homelessness.
Hamilton is Home looks to increase its supply as roughly 6,600 households in the city wait for subsidized units and some 2,200 people go without housing, according to municipal data.
The coalition’s efforts come during a resurgence in federal funding following a decades-long period of austerity in the long shadow of a postwar social-housing building boom.
Despite Ottawa’s renewed attention, academics and operators say the days of robust government dollars that allowed non-profits to build and maintain deeply affordable housing are numbered.
Over the years, escalating land, construction and labour costs have also made it difficult for projects to fly with low rents.
As such, non-profits, including those in Hamilton is Home, have plans that include a mix of rents, including near-market rates, to help them maintain stock and expand their portfolios.
“The government’s not funding new deeply affordable units,” said Sean Botham, CityHousing’s chief portfolio officer, noting the municipal provider aims for a “spectrum of incomes” in future buildings.
And the hope is non-profit rents, if increased only modestly to sustain buildings, will become more affordable in time, relative to more aggressively spiking rates in the for-profit market.
When opportunities arise, nonmarket operators can layer in more affordability by tapping into government envelopes or bridging tenant gaps through rental subsidies, said Steve Pomeroy, executive adviser with the McMaster University-based Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC).
That “more patient investment” approach is likely to gain steam as non-profits opt to advance projects, rather than not at all, despite not having funding for deeper affordability at the outset.
Offering perspective, this “intermediate market rent” in non-profit housing could be geared for households with incomes of $70,000 to $80,000 per year, noted Jim Dunn, CHEC’s director.
And the long-term goal should be changing the composition of Canada’s housing stock so that more of it falls into that bucket, Dunn said.
But as deep affordability in new projects evaporates, people relying on minimum wage and inadequate social assistance rates could be left in the lurch.
“Those benefits really are grossly insufficient relative to what rents are,” Pomeroy said. “So there’s little comfort, to be quite honest, for those folks on those types of incomes.”
Lower construction costs and new ways to finance projects, including through Ottawa’s borrowing capacity, are other pathways to rents “matched to real people’s incomes,” Cubitt said.
A “missing piece” to Build Canada Homes is an agreement with the province for operating funds to accompany the federal agency’s $1-billion capital envelope for transitional and supportive housing, he said.
“That’s still the existential question for supportive housing, and that’s the solution for homelessness.”
A closer look at housing projects
As it awaits federal funding, Hamilton is Home has launched a website, hamiltonishome.org, to showcase its members’ collective efforts.
Here are The Spectator’s snapshots of just a few of them:
YWCA
YWCA Hamilton has started construction on its 84-unit transitional housing building at the corner of Barton and Ottawa in the east end.
In May, the federal government announced $35 million in funding toward the roughly $46-million project, which is expected to open its doors in the fall of 2027.
The six-storey building for women, children and gender-diverse people fleeing domestic violence also serves as an urban infill project, replacing a pair of rundown edifices, and promises to dress up the streetscape.
CEO Medora Uppal described the future building as a lifeline for those facing homelessness and housing precarity.
“We are first-hand witnesses to what changes when a woman has a safe and stable home with the right supports around her,” Uppal said.
The building will also feature a rooftop garden and play area, as well as spaces for community programs and services, including health care, child care and employment support.
Good Shepherd
The social-service agency plans to add 156 more units to the mix through the redevelopment of its 54-bed men’s shelter site on Mary Street.
The program is meant to be flexible with short-, medium- and long-term housing all possibilities depending on need, said Brother Richard MacPhee, Good Shepherd’s CEO.
“What we are proposing is that when someone seeks accommodation with us, that they will begin a path out of homelessness and will work with our co-workers to begin a plan to be successful on that journey.”
Good Shepherd awaits federal funding for the roughly $80-million, 10-storey project, with construction potentially starting in 2026.
The agency is working on a transition plan for clients after the shelter is demolished.
Sacajawea
Spirituality is a key component of the plan, with a landscaped rooftop terrace incorporating a ceremonial fire feature.
“With our Indigenous culture, fire is very sacred to us, so that will help the tenants with their healing process, their healing journey,” executive director Miranda Rappazzo said.
Sacajawea’s project, which is across the street from the FreshCo shopping plaza, features 40 bachelor units of deeply affordable housing with Indigenous-focused support services.
In addition to health clinicians, a crucial part of the support will be elders offering counsel grounded in spirituality, Rappazzo said.
Roughly $13 million in federal dollars form the bulk of the project’s funding.
Habitat
Residents of the two-bedroom townhouses are to pay “fair-market” rent through a “lease-with-equity” model.
That means Habitat will set aside about a third of that for up to 10 years with the goal of saving nest eggs to buy homes.
“People can pay a reasonable rent and generate tens of thousands of dollars of savings over the course of a few years toward their down payment,” CEO Sean Ferris said about the roughly $4.5-million project.
Tenants’ household income must be between $77,000 and $155,000, a range rooted in a city study that deals with housing affordability, Ferris noted.
Habitat awaits the outcome of its application for federal funding.
Kiwanis
When it comes to affordable housing, Kiwanis thinks big and small.
That means larger apartment blocks like 1518 Upper Wentworth St., a 124-unit project set to open in early 2027.
And “small-lot intensification,” which involves replacing single-detached homes with affordable fourplexes.
Aided by “as-of-right” city zoning for triplex and fourplex projects, Kiwanis has set out to do just that on a series of properties it owns.
“All of a sudden, fourplexes just became financially viable for us because we already owned the land mortgage-free,” CEO Brian Sibley said.
Kiwanis hopes to have tenants in three-storey fourplexes on three former single-detached home parcels in the northeast city by early 2027.
Victoria Park
Victoria Park Community Homes broke ground on the 261-unit project on a former school site near Upper James Street and Mohawk Road last year.
It wasn’t easy to get all the “lasagna” layers of funding together, as Victoria Park Community Homes CEO Lori-Anne Gagne put it.
But the government dollars — including a federal $76.7-million loan and $19.5-million grant — eventually arrived for 60 Caledon Ave.
Victoria Park broke ground on the 261-unit project on the former school site near Upper James and Mohawk last year.
Construction of the $146-million project is expected to wrap up in 2027.
A key ingredient was the city’s sale of the 7.2-acre former public school site for $5 million, lower than its roughly $10-million market value, Gagne noted.
“The majority of this project is targeted for those working class that can’t afford the full market rent.”
The project features a pair of mid-rise apartment buildings and five blocks of back-to-back townhouses.
Indwell
Indwell is refurbishing Century Manor, a heritage holdover from the original 1875 Hamilton Asylum for the Insane on the west Mountain brow.
The plan for 41 supportive units involves restoring the brick building’s heritage features and knocking down interior walls to turn small rooms for patients into full-sized apartments.
The Century Manor project is part of a sweeping redevelopment of land off Fennell Avenue West near to St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s West 5th campus.
Schlegel Villages has plans for two nursing homes, along with a vision through partners for seniors’ housing, a Mohawk College expansion and market-rate rentals.
Century Manor’s proximity to St. Joseph’s modern psychiatric hospital, where future residents can access care, offers a unique advantage, Indwell’s Graham Cubitt said.
“Our highest level of success is when we continue the gains people have made in some sort of treatment program.”
Donated to Indwell, the reworked Century Manor, which has two-storey wings and a three-storey centre block, is expected to welcome residents in 2028.
CityHousing
After years of planning and legal struggles, the long-awaited redevelopment of CityHousing’s former 91-unit Jamesville townhouse complex is moving forward.
It took a minister’s zoning order (MZO) to override CN Rail’s provincial tribunal appeal and allow the residential mixed-income blueprint to advance.
CityHousing’s partnership with a private development consortium will see the replacement of 46 rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units lost to demolition of the townhomes in a new building.
The other 45 RGI units were transferred from Jamesville to a new 55-unit CityHousing building downtown on Bay Street North.
Overall, the Jamesville project envisions “up to 210 affordable units,” Housing Minister Rob Flack said during a news conference announcing the MZO at city hall in December.
A building for Indwell is also planned for the future Jamesville, where the bulk of the 600-plus homes are to be market rate in towns, mid-rise and highrise.
Project partners aim to have the first phase of the project, which includes the stacked towns and affordable units, completed in late 2031.
Hamilton is Home, Habitat for Humanity Hamilton, Indwell, Sacajawea, Kiwanis, Victoria Park Community Homes, Good Shepherd, City Housing Hamilton, YWCA Hamilton