Hamilton social-housing providers brace for $1.7-million dip in rental revenue

Social-housing providers in Hamilton are bracing for a $1.7-million hit in 2021 due to this year's provincewide rent freeze.

CityHousing alone expects a $1.1-million dip in revenue across its roughly 7,000 unit portfolio of subsidized and market rent buildings.

It's one of those moments of the good and the bad," Paul Johnson, general manager of healthy and safe communities, said in an interview.

The city supports the Ontario government's decision to freeze rents amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but social-housing operators have few avenues to recoup lost revenue, he said.

We do have to get the other side of it covered off, which is investments that allow social-housing providers to remain whole."

Apart from CityHousing, there are 37 social-housing providers in Hamilton. The planned - but rescinded rental hike for 2020 - was 1.5 per cent.

Between all social-housing operators, there are about 14,000 units in Hamilton. Providers typically have a stock of market" rent units, which are not rent-geared-to-income but still have rates lower than private buildings.

Over 10 years, the projected loss of revenue for the local operators is estimated to be $18.3 million notes a staff report presented Thursday.

The freeze has been badly needed for hard-hit tenants but it has created as domino effect" for social-housing operators, Coun. Nrinder Nann said.

Councillors backed her motion to have Mayor Fred Eisenberger write the province to ask it to offset losses.

They also directed the city's housing services division to reallocate $1 million in year-end surplus funds to a program to help support Hamilton tenants who face coronavirus-related hardships in 2021 and repair subsidized units.

Coun. Chad Collins, who heads up the CityHousing board, said he expects the financial impact of the pandemic to reverberate well into 2021.

The 2008 recession led to an increase in applicants to Hamilton's wait list for subsidized housing, he recalled.

We'll start to see massive spikes on the wait list for housing, and we're probably going to see increasing demand for shelter services."

According to latest count, 6,321 households are on the wait list. Of those, 1,112 are already in rent-geared-to-income units and hoping to transfer to another.

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com