Mike Schreiner leads discussion on affordable housing

ELORA  – Ontario Green Party Leader and Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner championed a discussion on affordable housing on Jan. 21 at the Elora Centre for the Arts.

Schreiner was joined by a number of panelists, including:

• Dave Purdy, director of housing services for the County of Wellington;
• Edward Thomas and Ryan Hicks from SRM Architects; and
• Andrea Sinclair, partner at MHBC Planning. 

Special guests also included Centre Wellington Mayor Shawn Watters, Wellington-Halton Hills MPP Joseph Racinsky and several county councillors. 

“In terms of developing permanent support and housing, we’ve been able to build enough that when we started working on it in 2018, we thought we would have solved the people experiencing homelessness crisis by now,” said Schreiner.

“But because the numbers have exploded so much we have a long way to go.”

He also spoke about a lack of federal investments.

“I just want to highlight that 93% of the deeply affordable homes built in the province of Ontario were built before 1995,” said Schreiner. 

“That’s when the federal government stopped investing ... if we are ever going to address the homelessness crisis that we’re facing in Ontario, we need the province and federal government to step up [and] fund deeply affordable, non-profit social and supportive housing.”

Dave Purdy

Purdy spoke a lot about  homelessness statistics, notably the Association of Municipalities of Ontario’s (AMO) Municipalities Under Pressure report, the one-year update on the Human and Financial Cost of Ontario Homelesness Crisis.

According to the report, the rate of homelessness in the province has increased 8% from 2024 to 2025.

“That is something that the Wellington Guelph area is also in line with,” said Purdy. 

The report also states about 50% of investments made towards housing and homelessness comes from the municipalities.

“Municipalities account for the largest and the fastest growing component and contribution,” said Purdy. 

The report also states the rate of homelessness is increasing faster in rural areas, where the provincial average is 31%. 

“The level of homelessness that was experienced in communities post pandemic has risen and we’ve never been able to get back in front of that,” said Purdy.

“And just from our area and our community perspective, from 2022 to 2025, we’ve seen an increase of about 64% in homelessness.”

Edward Thomas 

Thomas, president of SRM architects, offered solutions to housing density using ideas from Ottawa-based architect Roslyn Hill.

“We’re not going to solve the housing problem we face if we continue to use the existing zoning, development charges and tax systems we have in place,” said Thomas.

“We need more homes, but we need the right homes. We don’t need more sprawl in single-family homes ... we simply can’t afford to maintain the infrastructure we require for single-family homes.”

Thomas told the crowd the key to building more homes and reaching density targets isn’t new subdivisions or taller buildings, but instead smaller grouped dwellings of four to 12 units in existing neighborhoods.

“These homes are built where people want to live, close to the existing shops, schools, libraries, etcetera. They are being built in existing neighbourhoods, not needing to create new ones that used to be farmland,” said Thomas. 

“By building within the urban boundaries, we can use existing infrastructure such as roads, water lines, sewers, electrical grids and so on.”

Thomas gave an example of a neighbourhood of 80 houses. Developers tore down seven houses around the neighbourhood and created 52 new dwelling units, all while not building any new roads or other infrastructure. 

Ryan Hicks

Hicks built on Thomas’s ideas, citing the need for reduced zoning restrictions in municipalities.

“Edward touched on zoning and the loosening of zoning regulations within cities to allow for heightened density developments in some neighbourhoods without the need to go through costly and timely zone change applications, which can really slow down the process, costing non-profits money,” said Hicks.

“This is typically money that they don’t have because those projects have not progressed far enough to actually access a lot of the funding that’s out there.” 

Hicks shared insights about a project in Hamilton where 50 units were converted into fourplexes, adding 200 new dwellings to the community. 

Andrea Sinclair

Sinclair spoke to the need for “a range of housing types.” 

“As someone with two kids, I love them dearly, but don’t really want them living at home until they’re into their 40s.”

Sinclair also touched on the need for mindset changes in communities, citing how some people are “worried who will live there” when it comes to affordable housing.

“We need to be open to change or things are not going to improve,” she said.

Guests were invited to discuss the issue after the speeches and write down ideas.