LifeSpin: Margaret's Community Housing Project
London, Ontario
A Case Study
Housing has clearly emerged as one of the most important social issues facing Canadian society. A decade of withdrawal from support of public housing projects by all levels of government has resulted in record levels of homelessness with no solution insight. Exacerbating this problem has been the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients. They have been by in large left to their own devices with little or no support offered.
Recognizing this problem a community group in London, Ontario LIFESPIN (Low-Income Family Empowerment & Sole-Support Parents Information Network) devised a project that if successful would house survivors of psychiatric facilities and offer them support. The project would focus on women. They decided to call the project Margaret's Community Housing Project in memory of one of LIFESPIN's clients whose very real struggle with mental illness had touched everyone in the organization.
The steering committee included members with expertise in mental health, real estate, property management and construction. Importantly it also included mental health services consumer/survivors. The committee went to work to find a property that would be suitable for low-cost housing, contain space for programs and if they were lucky even have some commercial space. The commercial space was important for two reasons. Firstly in the initial stages of the project the rent from the commercial space would help keep the rents low and in the later stages could provide a space where the residents would be able to open their own businesses.
A perfect property was found. It consisted of several adjacent stores with walk up apartments. In all there were four stores and potentially 10 apartments. In addition there was property behind the retail space that could be used as recreation space or to plant a garden. The asking price was $395,000. After several of the committee members inspected the property they decided to put an offer of $370,000 on the property. After some negotiation a bid of $385,000 was accepted. LIFESPIN figured that another $60,000 of renovations would be required to bring the apartments up to code. This would bring the total project cost to $445,000.
Now the trick was to put the financing together and this is where CAIC entered the picture. LIFESPIN was able to get a first mortgage for 75% of the purchase price or $289,000. The hard part would be putting the rest of the financing package ($156,000) together. Just as LIFESPIN had put a steering committee together to plan the project they had to put a financing package together that drew on the resources available.
They went to the City of London to make their pitch. The province had just announced a small funding program for homelessness that would be administered by municipalities. Surely LIFESPIN had as good a project as any in that they were not only housing the “hard to house” they would be providing much needed services to this hard to reach group. The city agreed to a one time only grant of $60,000.
They went to Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC) to see if they could help with renovations. This project fulfilled a number of policy objectives for the ministry. The department has been mandated to provide employment, provide training and to promote projects, which provide housing. By providing renovations HRDC could fulfill all its mandates in one project. Its clients would be provided employment; training and more low cost housing would be available in the London area. HRDC agreed to provide $60,000 worth of renovations.
LIFESPIN then came to CAIC for the balance of the financing. A $36k second mortgage would then complete the financing required. CAIC agreed but there was just one thing left. The City of London had agreed to a $60,000 grant however the money would not be available until July and the sale of the building would be concluded in March. CAIC agreed to provide the $60,000 to LIFESPIN until July. Now the sale could proceed.
The last piece of the project was to provide services to the Margaret's House residents. Now with housing and facilities in place LIFESPIN could approach the local mental health authorities to provide services and financial support. Without the housing component the rest of the project could not have fallen into place.
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