Letter: Social Finance & Affordable Housing Group Updates from Institute of Southern Georgian Bay
Marilyn Struthers of the Institute of Southern Georgian Bay outlines local efforts to address the housing crisis through systems change, collaboration, and community-led solutions across Grey-Bruce.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
In the Owen Sound Current’s recent poll on community concerns, 63% of respondents cited affordable housing and homelessness as top of mind. A recent Employer One Survey on the concerns of businesses in our region offered similar results.
The housing crisis is affecting every part of our community, and people are worried.
We’ve been working largely behind the scenes for the last four years, as a cross-sector group of volunteers from businesses, local government and various housing interests to explore what has gone wrong in our local housing system. Two things have become very clear.
First, as a region of many small municipalities sharing both economic opportunities and problems created by market conditions, we need to work collaboratively on common solutions to create the scale of affordable housing we need.
And second, it is up to us — no one is coming to save us.
A system can only produce the results it was built to produce, and things around us have changed. We have learned that finding solutions to affordability is about building relationships across the system to explore what might be possible now.
Market conditions play a part, certainly, but development decisions are made locally, and some communities have been much more proactive than others. It is up to us to shape local systems to reach different outcomes.
Several years of learning and discussion led to the launch of the Whole Community Approach to Affordable Housing, our local four-point intervention strategy for a failing system.
Systems shift takes time; it is not the same as building an organization or a service for those most affected. We salute the organizations that do this work: Safe’N Sound, OSHaRE, Bruce Grey Poverty Task Force and other programs affiliated with the United Way of Grey Bruce.
Without their efforts, the impact of current conditions would be much worse. They are like so many Dutch guys in the fable, with fingers in the dike. They are owed much appreciation for this essential and exhausting work.
Our job at TISGB has been to work out a redesign of the dike.
This crisis is akin to an iceberg. We see people on our streets, but there is more happening below the waterline. Families dependent on lower-wage jobs in our City’s substantial service industries (think retail, hospitality & tourism, and healthcare support) struggle to afford high rents.
David McLeish recently outlined the disconnect between the Mayor’s development success story and the dramatic increase in people using local charities for food. Those numbers parallel the increase in Grey County’s subsidized housing waitlist as working people hope to turn to subsidized rents for relief.
The truth is, both the real estate and the building development industry have done well since the pandemic. But building to the lower end of Owen Sound’s median incomes just isn’t in their best interests.
Their business is profit, and there have been better fish to fry.
Now, we are learning alongside a national ecosystem of communities working to mobilize local investment in community-owned housing.
There will always be a need for upper-tier government investment in subsidized housing, but when the commercial market and local development regulations fail to produce affordable housing for the community’s workforce, communities are stepping up.
Seeing the gradual outcomes of local systems-change work takes careful looking. I am thinking about CBC’s Dead Dog Café sign-off: “Stay calm. Be brave. Wait for the signs.”
But once a system starts to shift, the lights come on in many places at once in seemingly independent efforts. Here are a few encouraging signs:
The Community Foundation Grey Bruce is committed to launching the Community Development Corporation (CDC), a local organization to mentor and support community-owned affordable development in our region.
Our Finance Learning Circle is developing a robust understanding of new community investment vehicles to support nonmarket housing developers. A new online series starts in February (updates here).
Owen Sound included Affordable Housing in the new Official Plan draft for the first time.
City Council shifted gears from a plan to demolish a building for parking to leasing it for women’s transitional housing in response to public input.
The Owen Sound Housing Corporation, the largest non-market developer in our region, was selected into the first cohort of the Infrastructure Institute’s Social Purpose Real Estate Accelerator.
Grey County updated its Housing Action Plan, and much of it is encouragingly familiar from our community conversations.
Across our membership, we have fingers quietly on the pulse of six affordable developments in our region.
A system shift spirals out on different levels. 2025 brought fast-tracking of wonderfully promising Ontario models in community investment finance, housing funds, community bonds and municipal partnerships to enable more nonmarket housing — housing owned by communities and held as affordable by mission rather than for profit, in perpetuity.
We are starting to know what we need to do — now it is about doing it together. If you are keen, be in touch.
Thank you,
Marilyn Struthers
Social Finance & Affordable Housing Group, hosted by the Institute of Southern Georgian Bay
Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of The Owen Sound Current and its editor or publisher.
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