The HMCo July 2020 Newsletter

While we continue and adapt this newsletter, your feedback is important. Please contact Housing Managers Collective by email at info@housingmanagers.ca

Community Benefits describe helping people that live within communities to access local benefits. This can mean being able to find childcare, employment, affordable housing, and well-being.

Some organizations have been working within their communities to find out what well-being means to the residents and the City of Ottawa has also been hosting consultations on a Safety and Well Being Plan. https://engage.ottawa.ca/Community-Safety-Well-Being-Plan

There is an opportunity to harness community benefits when there is any project or development happening in a neighbourhood. Considering the needs and ideas of residents could be the first step in any proposal that is bringing change into a community. This way the growth of a City would be based on an enhanced quality of life.

The LeBreton Flats Community Benefits Coalition is organizing to seize the opportunity for community benefits on this land as well as laying steps for future benefits in Ottawa.

Founded in 2019, the LeBreton Flats Community Benefits Coalition is a platform comprised of 25 Ottawa organizations looking to advocate for a shared vision of LeBreton Flats as a vibrant, inclusive, equitable, healthy and sustainable urban community where people from all walks of life can work and live. In collaboration with the Federation of Community Associations and United Way East Ontario, the Coalition’s goal is to develop and implement a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with the NCC as well as with the developers selected by the NCC to implement projects in LeBreton Flats.

The Coalition advocates that a CBA appears to be the best and most accountable mechanism to achieve community benefits and has drafted a spectrum of possible LeBreton CBA outcomes that include affordable housing, health services, sustainable energy, employment and apprenticeship, mobility justice and other key community needs. The NCC questions whether a CBA can work considering that the development will be rolled out in stages lasting many years.

The time is now to solve Canada’s housing crisis

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness is embarking on: Recovery for All, a campaign to end homelessness in Canada once and for all. This bold campaign is trying to reverse the decades long policy of homelessness, encouraging our Parliament to invest in a COVID-19 recovery for all individuals. 

We are at a unique moment in time when big change is possible - we have a progressively aligned federal Parliament and a public sharing in some of the fear, worry and anxiety that our homeless neighbours feel every day. We have proven models to follow, communities already having success in reducing homelessness and we have a growing and powerful grassroots movement working to end homelessness. 
We can stimulate the economy, create jobs, and end homelessness at the same time. 

I would really appreciate it if you could join too!
It takes 30 seconds. You can do it here: https://www.recoveryforall.ca

Project Manager Opportunity with the Ottawa Community Land Trust

The OCLT will work in partnership with local non-profits, cooperatives, and municipalities to preserve and support, in perpetuity, diverse community-owned affordable housing assets and real estate projects. 

It will create and maintain long-term assets by:

• developing and supporting key relationships with non-profits, cooperatives, foundations and various levels of government;
• preserving and renewing existing affordable housing;
• building new housing across the whole spectrum of non-market housing including but not limited to supportive, non-profit, and co-operative rentals;
• developing non-housing community amenities that are integrated with the overall community; and
• raising and spending capital to enable new development.

If you are interested in this opportunity please take a look at this RFP.