Mon July 22: Council Tonight, Community Housing Conversation This Week

Plus: Owen Sound City Band is celebrating its 104th birthday, and you're invited

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Shipping container bedrooms inside a repurposed factory in Estonia. Photo credit: Miranda Miller

There’s a community conversation about housing happening this week, and you’re invited.

Over the past decade-plus as a remote worker, I’ve had the opportunity to experience all kinds of co-living and cooperative housing models in North America, Latin America, and Europe.

Off-grid tiny homes in Northern Ontario. Shipping container living units inside an old Soviet factory. Sprawling estates reimagined as coliving hubs. Abandoned schools, apartment buildings, and factories converted to co-housing, with both private living space and shared amenities and services.

Sounds crazy, right?

Yet after experiencing the affordable lifestyle and sense of community these alternative living spaces provide, I’ve come to believe the crazy part is this 1950s-era expectation that we should each have our own little box where we can be all alone with several thousands of dollars worth of appliances and furnishings – especially when the average household size in Canada has fallen to 2.5 people.

More than one-quarter of Canadian households (27.6%) consist of just one person trying to make it on their own, paying for redundant space, appliances, furnishings, and services. As of February this year, 170 Grey and Bruce households were experiencing homelessness. Many, many more are precariously close to the edge, just a paycheque or two away from not making the rent or mortgage payment.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working. Moving slowly through endless red tape, building more tiny boxes, and leaving it up to for-profit developers to move only once financially incentivized enough to do so – it’s not working.

And so I’m heartened to see community members continuing to explore alternative housing solutions. We need them now more than ever.

You’re invited to attend this upcoming event at the Library and join the conversation our community needs to continue having about housing solutions that will work for us today – and our children tomorrow.

Public Notice

• Kelso Beach at Nawash Park in Owen Sound posted unsafe for swimming (on behalf of Grey Bruce Public Health) (City of Owen Sound)

Full subscribers – read on for local news reports including:

• Celebrations for Owen Sound City Band’s 104th birthday

• Police report a cyclist collided with a transport truck downtown on Friday and the investigation is ongoing

• Check out a new outdoor jam session event series

• An opportunity to nominate local residents who’ve made a difference in the community for a prestigious award

• Lots more, including what’s happening this week in and around Owen Sound

~ Miranda

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