Edmonton moves ahead with 10-year-old plan to turn school-designated sites into affordable housing

The city is announcing 10 new housing projects aimed at low-income Edmontonians. CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson has the story.

Edmonton is fulfilling a plan from 2015 to use land no longer needed for schools for affordable housing.

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On Monday, the city announced 10 developers who were selected through a competitive process to provide affordable housing at 10 sites.

Altogether, the plan will produce about 1,300 new homes, 70 per cent of which will be “on the affordable housing spectrum."

Some developments will be tailored to communities experiencing greater need, including Indigenous people, Black Canadians, newcomers, and women and children fleeing domestic violence.

One such example is a 64-unit project by WIN House in the northeast neighbourhood of Miller.

“Our main floor is going to be a place for women to do different types of programming… and also we’re going to have our own main offices there, so (we’re) really excited about that. And then there’ll be another four floors of residential units,” CEO Leslie Allen told CTV News Edmonton.

The project’s services will include counselling, legal system navigation, addiction support, and more, with the goal of setting women who are fleeing domestic violence up for permanent residency.

Vivid Homes and the Islamic Family and Social Services Association will be building 96 units on 2.5 acres in Dunluce. One third of these will have four bedrooms, meant to close what the developer calls a gap in housing options for multi-generational or larger families.

“In the north side, there are lots of ethnic emerging groups that have larger families and we’ve heard from them that there’s a shortage,” Vivid’s director, Issam Saleth, said.

“The families that we’ve been talking to (have) four kids, five kids, and they’ve been struggling to find a rental space.”

The Confederacy of Treaty No. 6 First Nations is also involved in two different projects for Indigenous people.

“It allows our young people to come to the city to go to the (University of Alberta), to go to (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), to go to Grant MacEwan (University). It allows our working class to have affordable living. Also, even elders, if they want to relocate for the services,” said Grand Chief Greg Desjarlais.

Each project must offer affordable housing for a minimum of 40 years, the maximum allowed under the Municipal Government Act.

Housing will need to be provided at reduced rental rates in order for providers to receive the land or financial support from the city.

The program is also receiving $99 million from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund.

None of the 10 locations were ever developed. They had been earmarked for schools in communities built between the 1970s and 1990s and were returned to the city in 2009 when school boards confirmed the land was not needed. Edmonton designated them for affordable housing in 2015.

“Part of what we’ve been working on over the last number of years as a city is recognizing that you can’t just design one housing type,” Mayor Andrew Knack said.

“And so we have been working through our work on land use to provide more housing choices across all of Edmonton. This program, it’s going to just really go down that same path that we’ve already been moving on, which is making sure that no matter what type of affordable housing you need, there’s going to be options for you.”

Also on Monday, the provincial government announced another $200 million available through the joint provincial-federal Affordable Housing Partnership Program to support the creation of affordable homes.

The province is encouraging local governments to look for land that could be used for affordable housing.

“One of the biggest challenges when you try to build these type of units is finding land to build them on,” said Jason Nixon, Alberta’s minister responsible for housing.

Using available municipal land is “creative” solution to that problem, he told CTV News Edmonton.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson