Topping the list of priorities for the St. Thomas delegation at last week’s Rural Ontario Municipal Association conference was housing and the need for supports for undertakings like Project Tiny Hope.
It will see 40 units of affordable housing take shape on a brownfield site at 21 Kains Street, the former home of Elgin Handles.
St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston is also seeking additional support from the province for the city’s partnership with Indwell.
Residents are now housed at the latest Indwell undertaking, The Station, located at 16 Queen Street.
Elgin-Middlesex-London MPP Rob Flack, the province’s associate minister of housing, has referenced Project Tiny Hope as, “the beacon of hope for all in Ontario.”
They may not be scenic tracts of land in the city, however it is the opinion of St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston that brownfields can be attractive. Valuable assets when it comes to land for housing.
And that is what prompted a meeting with the province’s environment minister at the ROMA conference.
With the rapid growth of St. Thomas, Preston stressed the need to focus on additional school spaces.
Preston agreed that since the EV battery plant announcement in March of last year, the city’s profile at events such as ROMA has been substantially elevated.
“We noticed when we were speaking with some ministers about projects we might have talked about four years ago or projects of the same type, there is a lot more urgency right now because the province has been a great help in getting PowerCo and Volkswagen here and now they know they have to be a big help to answer some of the other things like housing and some of the transportation issues.”
