Housing Supply Challenge Additional Funding

Eastern Ontario Organizations Receive Additional $3 Million in Funding from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Supply Challenge

Funds meant to support speeding up construction with communal services at the local level

Rural Impact Canada (RIC), a partnership between the Eastern Ontario Regional Network (EORN) and 2B Developments, received a $3 million prize from their participation in the Housing Supply Challenge, which is run by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). With the prize funding to date, RIC has been able to develop three programs that municipalities and housing providers (market, rental, etc.) can take.  The additional prize funding will enable RIC to further pilot, innovate and expand its program offerings.  The programs support the adoption of communal or decentralized water and wastewater management systems, the creation of municipal services corporations, by providing step-by-step guides, resources and tools. The objectives of these programs are to break down common barriers that rural and small municipalities have, in Ontario and across Canada, and to create the municipal environment that can support dense and diverse development. This leads to building more housing faster. 

“This project will simplify the administrative process for adopting communal service systems instead of individual private ones like septic systems. This change will enable more housing options and allow higher density construction in rural municipalities,” wrote the CMHC on its website announcing the funding.

Rural Impact Canada was one of nine finalists in the CMHC’s Canada-wide Housing Supply Challenge, which aims to remove or reduce barriers that hinder housing supply, and is only solution aimed at rural communities.

Communal servicing is a way for clusters of homes and businesses to share dedicated and local water and wastewater treatment facilities. Communal services approaches and technologies represent an alternative middle ground to the large-lot and well-and-septic approach traditional to rural areas, and to the hugely expensive centralized water and sewer systems approach used in cities.

Communal servicing has several advantages for rural and small municipalities including lower cost, time, and regulatory barriers for developers as well as new possibilities for economic growth through construction of mixed-use-development of residential, public, and commercial units for residents of small towns and hamlets. Communal servicing is a fair and sensible way to grow and build much-needed public tax base for rural municipalities with regulated, professionally operated and overseen systems to help protect the natural environment in ways well and septic may not.

To find out more about communal services visit https://www.eorn.ca/en/eorn-resources/communal-systems-and-municipal-services-corporations.aspx