Alan Pickersgill - The View From Here

(May 12) - Recession busting infrastructure money is coming to Guelph. Some is aimed at upgrading the housing in which some of our poorest community members live. It is still uncertain how much is coming, but it is on the way.

Wellington County Housing Services provides an umbrella under which families occupy almost 3,000 homes. Ownership ranges from co-ops to private nonprofits to county-owned housing. The county is the service manager, overseeing several housing providers. On April 20, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing wrote to service managers across Ontario to say that the provincial budget allocated $704 million for social housing renovation and retrofit projects. Wellington County will get a share of this money.

Housing providers were asked to submit a list of projects they are ready to move forward on. This had to be done last week, and the work, if approved, has to start in June and be finished by next March. Two of the criteria to be used in choosing which projects will get money are enhanced energy efficiency and reduced operating costs. The importance of these can’t be overstated. Most, but not all, of the families living in those 3,000 homes are receiving rent-geared-to-income subsidies. This money comes directly from the county’s tax base. The less it costs to operate the system, the lower the strain on you.

There has not been much new social housing built in Ontario in the past 15 years. Most of it is getting old and tired. Even the new housing is approaching 20 years old. Furnaces are starting to break down. The ones that were put in were generally bottom of the line construction grade units. No high efficiency furnaces were put into low income housing. Now they are coming to the end of their natural life expectancy. They will need to be replaced. By the end of this year, all new furnaces sold in Ontario must be at least 90 per cent efficient. These are more expensive, of course.

There is a similar situation with home appliances. All of the co-ops and nonprofits provide at least a fridge and stove. The fridges that were made 20 years ago were not energy efficient and are starting to break down. It is better to replace them with Energy Star models, but here’s the Catch 22: the upfront capital replacement money isn’t there, but the cost of keeping them running is a huge burden on operating budgets. There are rebates available, and there is a payback time. These are geared more towards private homeowners, and the process for getting rebates is complicated. The first step is an energy audit, then the energy upgrades are done, then a follow up audit, then the rebates come. This must all be done within an 18-month window.

I’ll give one example from the housing co-op where I work. It has 82 townhouses. At about $3,500 each, before rebates, the cost of installing a high efficiency furnace in each one is over $300,000 after taxes. Rebates of around $1,000 per furnace would drop this to about $220,000. Add in the cost of upgrading attic insulation, fixing draughty windows and doors, and buying more efficient appliances and you are looking at big dollars. It’s easy enough to say there is a 10-to 15-year payback time. The trick is finding the money to kick-start the process.

A system designed for private home owners breaks down when it is applied to multi-residential social housing complexes. Families who live in them shouldn’t have to wait for a recession before being included in the movement to reduce global warming.

# posted by Alan Pickersgill @ 6:39 PM