Frontenac County And ‘7 In 7’ Regional Housing Plan

Jeff Green | Apr 19, 2023

At a combined meeting of Frontenac County and the four Frontenac township councils, representatives from the Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus (EOWC) and the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN) were on hand with updates on the activities of the two inter-related organisations.

It was also an opportunity to brief new members of the Frontenac councils about the history and mandate of the two organisations.

The Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus is made up of the wardens from 13 county governments in Eastern Ontario, from Stormont Dundas and Glengarry at the Quebec border to Peterborough County at its western edge. While Cornwall, Brockville and Belleville are included, urban centres Ottawa and Kingston are not.

The EOWC was founded in 2002, as an informal lobby group, pressing both the federal and provincial governments to address a massive infrastructure deficit that had been created partly, when provincial highways and bridges were downloaded to the collection of rural municipalities.

The EOWC was incorporated as a not-for-profit organisation, representing the interests of the 13 municipalities. The wardens make up the board of the EOWC, and an executive is elected annually. As well, three priorities for each year are identified and form a work plan to advocate for the collective and individual interest of the members.

The three priorities for 2023, as explained by Renfrew County Warden and EOWC Chair Peter Emons, are stabilising funding and some operational guidelines for paramedic services, human resources and other issues related to long term care, and the urgent need for affordable housing in the region.

Peter Emons brought on Jim Pine, the long serving Chief Administrative Officer in Hastings County, who has spearheaded a number of EOWC initiatives over the years. Pine will be retiring from Hastings County at the end of June. He spoke about the EOWC “7 in 7” initiative, a multi-year project being promoted as a regional response to the provincial housing initiative.

“7 in 7” is the goal to build 7,000 affordable units in Eastern Ontario within the next 7 years,” Pine said. “It is an ambitious plan, and it will require funding support from both senior levels of government to come about.”

“We picked 7,000 units because that represents about half of the waitlist for affordable housing in our region,” said Pine. “With an average wait time of 5 years, 10 for certain types of housing, it is a problem for our residents. I like to say, “if we don't solve this, who will?”

Frontenac County Deputy Warden Frances Smith said that in her own township of Central Frontenac, “I've talked to a lot of people who are in need of housing but have taken their name off the wait-list, because they don't see the point in remaining on it, so that 14,000 is only a portion of the real need. But I agree, we need to start somewhere.”

The “7 in 7” project has a hefty price tag, $3.1 billion, based on the assumption that it costs $440,000 to build a single unit. Multiply that by 7,000 and it comes to $3.1 billion. In order to raise that kind of money, the federal and provincial governments will be approached to see if they can each pitch in $1billion, leaving the rest to be raised locally, or invested by builders through an incentive program that  is under development.

As part of the preliminary work on the project, Eastern Ontario has been divided into smaller units. Frontenac County is lumped in with Lanark, Leeds and Grenville, and the City of Kingston, which is included in this project even though it is not a member of EOWC. This sub-region is slated for 1317 of the 7000 units, at an estimated cost of $585 million.

The inclusion of Kingston is relevant to Frontenac County, because affordable (social) housing units in Frontenac County are administered by the City of Kingston, with funding from Frontenac County. Eight hundred of those 1317 units ($354 million) are identified for Kingston-Frontenac.

“If we are tied in with Kingston, does that leave about 200 units for Frontenac County, based on our percentage of the population?” asked Frontenac Islands Mayor Judy Greenwood-Speers.

“I'm not sure about the exact number for that,” said Pine, “there are a number of factors, including wait list and population.”

Earlier in the meeting, Frontenac County Warden Ron Vandewal said that the Verona Seniors Housing Project, and the Sharbot Lake Public School Project are being proposed to the EOWC as potential pilots for the “7 in 7”.

“We appreciate the leadership Frontenac County has taken, as a leader in communal servicing which is key for multi-unit projects in rural areas, and we will look at those pilots that Warden Vandewal mentions as potential pilots for “7 in 7”.

According to Jim Pine, this project, if successful, could act as an incentive to encourage the construction of 14,000 market value units by property developers, leading to substantial economic activity and jobs in the region in the coming years.

Frontenac County Council will be considering a resolution to endorse the “7 in 7” regional project at the regular monthly meeting this week. A consulting group has been hired to move the project through its next steps, and develop a business plan.

The Eastern Ontario Regional Network is also slated to play a role in coordinating the project once it gets going.

EORN presentation

Lisa Severson, the Communications Director for EORN, along with Marco Smits, EORN policy analyst, presented an update to the Cell Gap coverage project that EORN is overseeing in the EOWC region. EORN is a not for profit corporation that was created by the EOWC about 15 years ago to develop and bring to fruition large technology projects aimed at bringing high speed Internet and cell service to the entire region. The two projects it has managed use the same funding model. For the Cell Gap coverage project there were matching financial contributions from the federal and provincial governments and smaller contributions from member municipalities. This pool of money was used as an incentive to bring new and improved cell-phone technology to the entire region, including more remote areas that cell providers would not otherwise be interested in covering because they have a small customer base.

Rogers Communications made the winning proposal when the Cell-Gap project went to an RFP process. As Marco Smits outlined, the project is at its mid-point. Over the entire region, the project will bring new equipment to 312 existing towers, a process that is almost complete, and will also result in the construction of 260 new towers, which is taking longer to get done, but is slated to be complete within 2 years.

“In Frontenac County, there are 13 upgrades and 13 new towers planned. The upgrades are all done, though none of the towers have been completed yet. Seven of the towers have seen the completion of the land use authority step in the process, which is a key point,” said Smits. “It takes up to two years to secure land, and get to the point where the location is an authorised site. That's something that the municipalities can help us with, to get the land-use authority as quickly as possible.”

EORN was working on a new broadband Internet project, a follow up to a successful project it ran in the early 2010’s, when the Province of Ontario decided to make Internet upgrades a provincial priority that is managed centrally.