Peterborough residents said housing was their top priority for the 2021 budget – here’s how it’s being addressed

12/04/20 • 23 min

In our sixth episode of the Budget Week podcast, co-publishers Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson go over how the draft 2021 municipal budget addresses the issue of affordable housing and homelessness. In particular, we look at funding for the city’s shelters, rent supplements, incentives for affordable housing, and changes to funding from higher levels of government.

Episode transcript

Ayesha Barmania 0:02

Hello, you’re listening to Peterborough Currents. I’m Ayesha Barmania. In this episode of the Budget Week podcast, we’re going to talk about the thing that came at the top of the list of the survey of citizens’ priorities for the 2021 budget. And that’s housing and accommodation.

So my colleague and co-publisher Will Pearson has been following the developments on affordable housing and homelessness. And he’s with me now to tell us about it. Hi, Will.

Will Pearson 0:24

Hello.

Ayesha Barmania 0:26

Um, so take us through the broad strokes of what we’re going to talk about today.

Will Pearson 0:29

Sure, so there’s a couple things in the 2021 budget that jumped out at me when I first looked at it. The first is a pretty significant increase to the amount of money this city is spending on homelessness services. I also noticed an increase to the rent supplement program, which is great to see.

But not everything that the City does around housing and affordable housing does get reflected in the 2021 budget. Either because it gets funded by other levels of government or because some of the ways that the City, you know, encourages affordable housing development, for example, is not really through funding, but more through softer measures like incentives to encourage development. So I think we’ll maybe in this conversation stray from the budget itself a little bit to talk about those areas. But those first, the two things I mentioned are what jumped out at me and the budget document itself.

Ayesha Barmania 1:23

Yeah, absolutely. And so we talked a little bit during our last episode about the funding increase that’s drafted in the budget for the shelter system. So for folks who missed that episode, what’s that going to pay for?

Will Pearson 1:40

Sure, yeah. So the first thing to say is just that the shelter system continues to be experiencing a lot of pressures, there’s just a high level of need in the community for the shelter services. So during budget week, Council approved a plan to increase the base funding for the Youth Emergency Shelter by about $60,000 as well as increase the starting wage for shelter workers to bring it up to a living wage. So that’s kind of two of the ways that homelessness money is being increased and how that money has been spent. Most of the money increased in the homelessness program this year is going to the shelter system itself.

Ayesha Barmania 2:16

Okay, gotcha. There was a little bit of conversation about this during the finance committee meetings, right?

Will Pearson 2:21

Yeah, there wasn’t really a lot of debate about whether this budget line should increase. I think the councillors are pretty well on board with the idea of increasing the funding. But instead, they really used the budget meeting as an opportunity to – some councillors at least – to voice their support for the shelter system. And I think this comes– I think there’s a little bit of frustration on council for some of the ways that the media have been covering homelessness in the city. I think that they sense that maybe the media is focusing on negative stories and bad news stories and ignoring the good news. Keith Riel spoke about his wish that the media covered some of the successes of the city a little bit more, for example.

Keith Riel 3:02

Get your story straight. This council is committed to helping the less fortunate. This council has put money where their mouth is. And we continue to do the job and to help the people that are marginalized who need the help. So why don’t we have a good news story about what we’re doing.

Will Pearson 3:23

And then Diane Therrien spoke, you know, again, just to support the shelters, and in particular, the shelter workers.

Diane Therrien 3:31

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do. There’s a lot, you know, a lot of work still to be done. Our shelter system, our housing and homelessness system is not perfect. You know, we do hear a lot of concerns about the Brock Mission and why the Brock Mission are doing, you know, running this service. And that it’s also important to note that there aren’t a lot of organizations that are wanting to do this work. It’s, you know, these frontline workers are not paid a living wage, they’re not paid nearly enough for the amount of time and energy that they put into trying to help people. So it’s really easy to criticize. It’s, you know, but there are people that are working in the Brock Mission, at YES, at all of our frontline shelter ...

Episode transcript

Ayesha Barmania 0:02

So my colleague and co-publisher Will Pearson has been following the developments on affordable housing and homelessness. And he’s with me now to tell us about it. Hi, Will.

Will Pearson 0:24

Hello.

Ayesha Barmania 0:26

Um, so take us through the broad strokes of what we’re going to talk about today.

Will Pearson 0:29

Ayesha Barmania 1:23

Will Pearson 1:40

Ayesha Barmania 2:16

Okay, gotcha. There was a little bit of conversation about this during the finance committee meetings, right?

Will Pearson 2:21

Keith Riel 3:02

Will Pearson 3:23

And then Diane Therrien spoke, you know, again, just to support the shelters, and in particular, the shelter workers.

Diane Therrien 3:31

Previous Episode

City council went through each page of the 2021 municipal budget – here are the highlights

Last week, Peterborough city councillors sat as the finance committee to review each page of the 2021 draft municipal budget highlights book. This year, it was three evenings of deliberations and discussion, which gave councillors an opportunity to ask questions about city operations and propose amendments to the draft budget put forward by staff.

Co-publishers Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson have collected the highlights from each meeting so you can hear what happened.

To hear the highlights from Monday’s meeting about the City’s corporate and legislative department, skip to minute 2:15; for the highlights of the infrastructure and planning department from Tuesday’s meeting, skip to minute 9:30; and for the highlights on the community services department from Wednesday, skip to minute 19:05.

The 2021 budget will be voted to be approved on December 14 at a city council meeting, and things in the draft documents may change between now and then. Citizens can review the documents, communicate with their city councillors and register to speak at the city council meeting. To learn more click here.

And if you have any questions about the municipal budget, you can also ask us!

Episode transcript coming soon.

Next Episode

City council votes to approve the 2021 municipal budget

On Monday, Peterborough’s city council sat for the last meeting of 2020 and voted to approve the budget documents drafted by city staff with amendments. Peterborough Currents has been covering these deliberations for the past month and in this episode, co-publishers Ayesha Barmania and Will Pearson go over the highlights of this meeting so you can hear what happened.

Episode transcript

Ayesha 0:00

Hey – Ayesha here, before we get into the podcast, I wanted to let you know about something that we’re trying at Peterborough Currents. As we look ahead into 2021, things are still uncertain and 2020 has been a heck of a year for Will and I to try and start a business. And the one thing that we’re realizing is that to become a sustainable operation, we need the financial support from our audience. And that’s why we’re asking folks to support our work for 2021 by becoming monthly sustainers. If you head over to peterboroughcurrents.ca/supportus you can sign up to support our work. It really means a lot to us if you’d consider contributing. And thank you!

Ayesha 0:45

Hello you’re listening to Peterborough Currents. I’m Ayesha Barmania.

This is the final episode of our Budget Week Podcast and to help me wrap up our coverage of the 2021 Budget deliberations, I’m here again with Currents’ co-publisher Will Pearson.

Will Pearson 0:55

Hello.

Ayesha 0:56

And so today, Will and in this episode, we’re going to go over some of the highlights of the City Council meeting on Monday when council voted to approve the budget documents which we’ve been going into over this series. And before we get into some of the clips we want to play, I just want to say that this was the last City Council meeting of the year, and the budget was just one item on a pretty long agenda and pretty much all of the amendments to the document had been proposed, debated and voted on during the Finance Committee meeting at the end of November, which we covered in episode 5.

But there was one thing added at this council meeting but there were also 27 citizen delegations that spoke to council about the budget. And to kick us off, Will, there was one in particular you wanted to talk about.

Will Pearson 1:36

Yeah, so I want to bring up a delegation that was delivered by Reverend Brad Smith from St. John’s Anglican Church on Hunter Street. St. John’s runs the One Roof Community Center, which is a meal program and a drop in center for people that are marginalized or homeless in Peterborough. And funding for the One Roof Community Center was always kind of baked into the homelessness budget all along. But it only came up at this last city council meeting because throughout November, there were some negotiations going on about what the service agreement would look like in 2021. And basically what was going on in those negotiations was One Roof was trying to secure some extra municipal funding to make up for a drop in the fundraising that it’s been able to do because of the pandemic. Currently, the City funds One Roof, but with $208,000 a year and the expectation is that they’ll deliver one meal per day, One Roof has been able to fundraise and through its own resources deliver two meals a day as well as additional activities, social supports, and like a community center. And so when One Roof was trying to get more funding so that during the pandemic who could continue to offer that enhanced service, it seems like the city wasn’t interested in increasing its support. And so the recommendation was to hold it steady at $208,000. Despite the fact that there is no increased need, especially for food programs, right now, during the pandemic.

Rev. Bradley Smith 2:58

The issue of food and security is not going away. In fact, as we’ve already seen, in the last six months, the number of community members accessing the meal program at One Roof is increasing as people’s financial resources are hit hard by the pandemic. If the city is going to issue a request for proposals for a meal program, it must do so seriously, including a credible amount of funding.

Will Pearson 3:23

So that was Brad Smith from St. John’s One Roof had asked for $450,000. So more than double the funding of 2020. They kind of lowered their bid to $375,000 when the city balked at that, but then the city kind of held firm at $208,000.

So Reverend Smith, on Monday night, told city council that he signed the agreement, even though he didn’t feel like it was the best thing for the community.

Rev. Bradley Smith 3:54

When I was informed that our first and revised proposals would not be accepted and that the City would accept a new one year agreement. I felt compelled to accept the terms. With less than two months left in the current agreement, there wasn’t sufficient time to rebuild One Roof Community Centers model without the City as a partner. So this was the only way to keep the program alive. Otherwise, all of...