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After months of back-and-forth and digging through the numbers, Cambridge has announced it will receive $4.44 million from a provincial housing fund, even though at first they were told they didn’t qualify.
Ontario’s Building Faster Fund is a $1.2 billion program spread over three years. To get any money, cities had to reach 80 percent of their housing unit goals for 2023.
Kitchener got $14 million from the fund, while Guelph received $4.68 million.
Cambridge was initially denied funding, but Deputy City Manager Hardy Bromberg and his team disagreed with that decision and went back over the figures. A news release last Thursday confirmed they proved the province’s numbers were off.
“It was quite disappointing because, according to our statistics, we had met 88 per cent of the target,” said Bromberg.
City staff soon figured out that the mix-up involved additional residential units, or ARUs.
“That might be a basement apartment or upstairs apartment, or a tiny home in your backyard,” said Bromberg.
The province had only counted 75 permits for ARUs, but Cambridge actually issued permits for 250.
Bromberg explained that pushing for the funds meant lots of discussions between city officials and Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation to double-check everything – plus several talks between Mayor Jan Liggett and Minister Paul Calandra from Municipal Affairs and Housing.
“And I’ll give kudos to the province because they were willing to listen and look at the numbers, and set up a working group,” said Bromberg.
City staff joined that working group to help confirm all data was accurate.
According to a news release from Mayor Jan Liggett, as of Oct. 25, both housing stats and funding have been finalized.
“We were very confident with the stats that we have, but until the province recognized that, there is always a little bit of room for doubt,” said Bromberg. “It was a sigh of relief.”
In her statement, Liggett expressed thanks for working with Ontario’s government and said they plan on using these funds on infrastructure projects around town to help meet shared goals.
Bromberg added most of this money will go toward covering growth-related costs like fixing roads or repaving them.
“Housing starts for 2024 have been quite low, but the city is still very active in dealing with other kinds of growth,” said Bromberg. “It’s not just about growing a community in terms of housing; it’s also about jobs.”
