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Affordable housing

A new National Housing Strategy announced last November finally gave municipalities some optimism that there’s a long-term plan to reduce homelessness. City hall has a 10-year housing and homelessness plan that lasts until 2024 and it will soon ask council for feedback before reviewing the plan at the halfway mark. Big housing projects are afoot in the capital, including a major redevelopment of the land around the future Trillium Line station off of Gladstone Avenue. The city needs upper-tier money to continue building new units, but it’s just as interested in receiving money for costly repairs of existing social housing.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia Network

Asset repair

Rainfall and unseasonably warm weather in Ottawa this week will keep pothole repair crews busy, a reminder of the resources required to keep municipal assets up to snuff. The city has been short about $70 million each year on repairs for roads, buildings, parks and utilities. Under the latest municipal budget strategy, it won’t be until 2027 that the city closes the repair deficit. The gap has weighed heavy on the minds of many councillors, some of whom pursued a one-time infrastructure levy for 2018, only to be upstaged by the mayor’s bid to use a $10-million surplus from 2017 to fund asset repairs this year. The city will take whatever the feds can offer to fix crumbling infrastructure.

Public transit

The city shouldn’t expect another pile of cash to expand its public transit service. It was only last June that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced more than $1 billion for the city’s Stage 2 LRT expansion, which is scheduled to begin construction in 2019. The city also received $600 million from the feds for Stage 1, scheduled to open this coming November. Studies for Stage 3 to Kanata are ongoing, but it’s much too early to talk about upper-tier contributions, since the city isn’t sure when it will build the suburban extension. However, the city could always use transit money to improve the bus network and existing transit infrastructure.

Photo by Tony Caldwell

Opioid crisis

Ottawa is one of three Canadian cities with federal approvals to have supervised injection services at four sites. Montreal and Edmonton also have four injection sites. The only Canadian city with more is Toronto, which has five. Recently, Ottawa’s city council directed the mayor to ask the province to fund more addiction treatment services. Federal money flowing to the lower governments could help cities like Ottawa complement the supervised injection sites with addiction support programs.

jwilling@postmedia.com

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