At the August 24 city council meeting, money from the affordable housing reserve was given to the St. Joseph’s Housing Corporation to help complete a project to provide 65 affordable units to seniors. As a delegate at that meeting, the executive director of the Drop In Centre announced that her non-profit was working on a deal of its own for supportive housing, and that became the story.

This week on the podcast, Gail Hoekstra will join us to talk about the Drop In Centre’s project to buy the Parkview Motel at Woolwich Street and Marilyn Drive, and turn it into supportive housing. It’s important to note that supportive housing is housing, not shelter. It’s defined by the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing as “a combination of housing assistance and supports that enable people to live as independently as possible in their community.”

The immediate aftermath of Hoekstra sharing her news about the project was the usual NIMBY concerns and extremely stereotypical and hurtful comments that otherized the people that this project is meant to help. Bad things are born in an information vacuum, and before a narrative about this project gets too solidified in a package that people have pre-made for it, we’re going to lay out the facts on this Parkview supportive housing project.

In this week’s podcast, Hoekstra will take us through the timeline and tell us how did this project come about, how far along are they in the process, and what resources have they brought to bear on the project. We will also talk about what resources the Drop In Centre will need to complete the project, and why social services are moving away from emergency shelter systems and towards supportive housing models. And finally, we will discuss the outreach to the neighbourhood, and overcoming politics to create more supportive housing in Guelph.

So let’s learn more about the possible transformation of Parkview on this week’s Guelph Politicast!

To learn more about the project, you can tune in to the Ward 2 town hall on Thursday at 7 pm, and you can find the link to that remote meeting here. A report on this project is likely coming to the October 26 council meeting, and that agenda will be released on October 15.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.