June 22, 2022, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:01 PM; it being noted that the following members were in remote attendance: M. van Holst, M. Salih, J. Helmer, M. Cassidy, J. Morgan, P. Van Meerbergen, E. Peloza, S. Hillier.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

2.1   2021 Performance Report and May 2022 Semi-Annual Progress Report

2022-06-22 Staff Report - 2021 Performance Report and May 2022 Semi-Annual Progress

Moved by M. Hamou

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the City Manager, the report including the 2021 Performance Report, May 2022 Semi-Annual Progress Report as appended to the staff report dated June 22, 2022, BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   Not to be heard before 4:05 PM - Housing Development Corporation (HDC) - 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder Annual Resolutions

2022-06-22 Staff Report - AGM - HDC

Moved by J. Fyfe-Millar

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the Housing Development Corporation:

a)  on the recommendation of the City Manager, the Independent Auditor’s Report of KPMG LLP for the Shareholder of Housing Development Corporation, London, dated December 31, 2021, BE RECEIVED;

b)  the presentation by M. Espinoza, CEO, Housing Development Corporation BE RECEIVED;

c)  the 2021 Financial Statements BE RECEIVED; and,

d)  the 2021 Update on Strategic Area of Focus BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

3.2   Not to be heard before 4:05 PM - London and Middlesex Community Housing Inc. (LMCH) - 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholder Annual Resolutions

2022-06-22 Staff Report - AGM - LMCH

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Lehman

That the following actions be taken with respect to the London & Middlesex Community Housing:

a)  on the recommendation of the City Manager, the proposed by-law as appended to the staff report dated June 22, 2022 as Appendix “A” entitled “A by-law to ratify and confirm the Annual Resolutions of the Shareholder of London & Middlesex Community Housing Inc.”, BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on July 5, 2022;

b)  the presentation by P. Chisholm, CEO, London & Middlesex Community Housing BE RECEIVED;

c)  the 2021 Annual Report BE RECEIVED; and,

d)  the 2021 Financial Statements BE RECEIVED.

Motion Passed (15 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

4.1   London Community Recovery Network – Recovery Funding Business Cases

2022-07-22 Staff Report - LCRN - Recovery Funding Business Cases

Moved by M. van Holst

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Planning and Economic Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report dated June 22, 2022 related to the London Community Recovery Network (LCRN) – Recovery Funding Business Cases:

a) LCRN Business Cases: A through C BE RECEIVED;

b) the following funding requests BE APPROVED:

i)  Business Case #1: Estimating the Size of the Gig Labour Market in London and Area;

ii)  Business Case #2: London City of Music Expo; and,

iii) Business Case #3: City of Music Conference and Events; and,

c) the Mayor and the City Clerk BE AUTHORIZED to execute any contract or other documents, if required by the City Solicitor, to implement the approved noted in part b) above.

Motion Passed (14 to 0)

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

None.

5.1   (ADDED) Delegation - London: A Place to Call Home - Mike Wallace, Executive Director, London Development Institute (LDI)

Moved by S. Lehman

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That the presentation, and associated report, from M. Wallace and J. Zaifman, of London Development Institute and London Home Builders Association, respectively, with respect to “London: A Place to Call Home”, BE FORWARDED to the Civic Administration for review, with a request to provide a report back to the appropriate standing committee.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

6.   Confidential (Enclosed for Members only.)

Moved by E. Peloza

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That the Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convenes in Closed Session to consider the following:

6.1  Land Acquisition/Disposition / Solicitor-Client Privileged Advice / Position, Plan, Procedure, Criteria or Instruction to be Applied to Any Negotiations        

A matter pertaining to the proposed acquisition or disposition of land by the municipality, including communications necessary for that purpose; advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege; commercial and financial information, that belongs to the municipality and has monetary value or potential monetary value and a position, plan, procedure, criteria or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried on or to be carried on by or on behalf of the municipality.

Motion Passed (13 to 0)

The Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee convenes in Closed Session from 6:09 PM to 6:42 PM.

7.   Adjournment

Moved by S. Turner

Seconded by J. Fyfe-Millar

That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.

Motion Passed

The meeting adjourned at 6:46 PM.

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (2 hours, 17 minutes)

Colleagues, we’re going to call the meeting to order. I will ask you four screens on, please. Four screens on for those who are remote. Ask the clerk to confirm.

I can confirm, Corum. Thanks very much. We’re going to begin with the land acknowledgement. I’ll call on Councillor Turner, please.

I thank you, Your Worship. We acknowledge that we are gathered today on the traditional lands at Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lene Peiwak, and the Adwandrum peoples. We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. We acknowledge the treaties that are specific to this area, the two-rule Wampum Belt Treaty of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Silver Covenant Chain, the Beaver Hunting Grounds of the Haudenosaunee Nafnan Treaty of 1701, the McKee Treaty of 1790, the London Township Treaty of 1796.

You hear on track’s Treaty of 1827 with Anishinaabek and the Dish with one spoon covenant Wampum of the Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee. The three indigenous nations that are neighbors to London are the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation, Oneida Nation of the Thames, and the Muncie Delaware Nation who all continue to live as sovereign nations with individual and unique languages, cultures, and customs. Thank you, Councillor. The City of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for council standing or advisory committee meetings and information upon request.

To make a request for any city service, please contact accessibility@london.ca or 519-661-2489 extension 2425. To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact SPPC@london.ca. I’ll look for any disclosures, can you hear your interest? I see none.

I will now turn to the consent agenda 2021 performance report and May 2022 semi annual progress report. For this, I’ll look for a mover and a seconder, please. Councillor, I move seconded by Councillor Hopkins. Thank you very much.

Ms. Livingston, any comments you wish to make prior to any questions that may be asked? Yes, thank you, your worship. On behalf of civic administration, we’re very pleased to table both of these reports with council this evening as part of our ongoing commitment to accountability and transparency on the implementation of council’s strategic plan.

Before you are two reports, the 2021 performance report, which really answers the question, did we do what we said we were going to do? And the second is the semi annual 2022 progress report, which comments on the delivery of the strategies. I’m pleased to share with council that despite the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, that we have made very good progress on the delivery of council’s strategic plan, 97% of all actions are complete or on target for completion and with respect to the performance report, we are meeting or exceeding targets in a number of instances and where we have not been able to meet those targets, it’s largely related last year to the restrictions, the ongoing restrictions with respect to the pandemic and what we were able to do in terms of engagement and other kinds of initiatives. So with that, your worship all pause and the entire team is here to help and answer any questions council may have.

Well, let’s see if they do. Any questions or comments from Ms. Livingston or staff? They always say in Ms.

Livingston, when there are no questions, it means you’ve done like the most amazing job ever. Councilor Hopkins, did you have a question? Yes, Mr. Mayor and to you to staff, they have done an amazing job on this report.

It is quite detailed, a lot of work has been going on. I do have a quick question and it relates to the increase in supportive housing that needs to be, the challenges that we have with supportive housing, homelessness in our city, we’re doing a lot. Obviously we need to do more and I know through you to staff what needs to be done to do more and to build on what we’ve already done. Ms.

Livingston, do you wish to refer that? Mr. Mayor, it looks like Mr. Mathers is stepping up to answer that question.

Well, he is wise, Mr. Mathers, please go ahead. Through your worship. So luckily we’ll be hearing tonight actually from the folks at HDC to provide you a little bit of background.

And then moving forward, we have our newly developed municipal housing development group that will be bringing some future reports and we’re reporting back on this. And we feel that we we’re at a good point right now where we’ve been given support by council through the 3000 unit plan, action plan. And right now we’re just working on trying, I’m actually moving that forward, which like any kind of development related work, but it does take some time. So we do feel we’re very well positioned and have a lot of support from council on that.

Thank you. Can I drop it? Yeah, if I could just do a follow up. I’m really pleased that we as a council have come together and are very supportive when it comes to the homelessness and the supportive housing that is needed in our community.

And I know staff are quite involved in it. I as a member on the IMO board, it is a big conversation with large municipalities in the province, the need for funding and support for our municipalities. And I just want to emphasize the importance of the province coming in and building on what we have done here in the municipality. Thank you.

And thank you. Next I have Councilor Vanholst. Thank you, Your Worship. And also congratulations to staff for having accomplished a lot.

So it’s impressive to read through this. So one of the few questions, one of them is about the on target items. So I think we’re three years into a four year plan just about and 75% are on target. Do we think that we might have back and loaded a lot of the items here?

Do, how are we feeling about completing that? That’s 75% in the time that’s left. Well, we’ll take that back to staff and I’ll look to Ms. Livingston.

Mr. Mayor, could I ask the Councilor to show me where he’s looking at the 75%? Yes, and by the way, this is a massive report, as you know. So what would be helpful, colleagues for any other questions, if you could reference the page or the item number, I think it would be helpful because we don’t want anything lost in translation.

Councillor Vanholst. Yes, thank you. I have written some page numbers down. Sorry, I didn’t give it to you.

So this is page six of the written agenda and I’m looking at status indicators and between November 2021 and May 2022. So in terms of completion, it looks like— I’m with you, Councillor. Another seven percent. So we’ve almost, you know, this is another 50% added onto the items that are complete.

That’s great progress in half a year. So, but now I see that on target, there’s 75%. And so I’m wondering how we’re feeling about that, that’s still the bulk of our items, how we’re feeling about completing those in the time remaining. What do we ask?

Yes, through you, your worship. Thank you for the question. The many of those that show up in the 75% are in fact, annual items that we do or will do every year. So we show them as on target because there’s something we undertake each year.

Also, in some instances, we, because of the pandemic, we did have to move timelines out a bit. And so that’s what you’re seeing is some of that adjustment as we move forward, but we’re confident that with moving those, we will still be able to deliver those. And the other component is the pacing of our strategic plan also gets reflected through our multi-year budget, of course. So as the investments come on, that is what supports some of the implementation.

So we, when we say something is on target, we’re quite diligent in ensuring that we are able to achieve it. If we think we have to move the timeframe, we report that through the variance and indicate to counsel when and why. And then we do separate variance reports. So I think what that number reflects is kind of the adjustments that we make as we go through the implementation of the strategic plan.

And this time reflects a bit of a unique period and time, I guess, in terms of the number of adjustments we’ve had to make. Thank you, Councilor Adholst. Yes, well, that’s a good and reassuring answer. I’m gonna look at page 37 now, the written agenda.

And that refers to the infrastructure gap. And I see there, prior to that, there was percentages. Here we’re looking at some dollar figures. And some, I think, amazing results here.

They, I see in the wastewater sanitary, we had expected to have a gap of 28 million, but now it’s down to two million. So I think that’s a wonderful result. So I’ll ask maybe for a comment on that one specifically. And then a second question is some of the others that are also great news, where they say there’s no gap, where one was expected.

And my question there is, what does that mean going forward? Well, let’s take it the way we eat and elephant is about at a time, Ms. Livingston, do you wanna take a bite? Your worship, I’d like to ask Ms.

Barbong to respond please. If you would, please, Ms. Barbong. Yes, thank you through the chair.

So this is really the more detailed analysis of the area by area in terms of where the investment has gone as part of the capital plan. So as you are well aware that we have had a great deal of investment through the business cases that the council has approved as part of the multi-year budget and through subsequent additional investments that have also been done through our year-end monitoring reports that go to support the gap as a whole. And then through some of the allocations where, so we have the process where the money is put aside. And then as the capital projects come forward, we fund them with the infrastructure gap funding that council has approved.

So you see the breakdowns between each type of asset category that is here in specific and that we have made some significant progress towards the gaps in some area. And some of the larger ones, transportation is the biggest one we have, where we start, we’re making progress, but we’re not quite there yet. And each and every year the investment continues that we’re starting to move forward. We have just embarked on the work now that we’re going through to update our next capital asset management plan.

So they’re going through and they will begin over the next year, the additional work to assess those gaps so that we are ready to look at what those are as we embark on the next multi-year budget process. So there’s definitely continued investment. We’ve had some great areas and smaller areas I would suggest where we’ve been able to close the gap. So those are very, very successful.

But I think as each year goes by, as we continue to look at the levels of service and advance some of that work. And certainly inflation and impacts on climate change, those will be some of the next iterations that we will start to look at as we move forward with the next capital asset management plan. But I would say certainly some good progress. And as you see the budgets progress, those will continue to change each and every year as continued investment goes towards the areas that need it most.

Thank you. Anything else, sir, Councilor Rehnholst? Thank you. I think that was a good answer.

I would say it would have been interesting in this report to see what the 2020 figures were. So right now I can look at this and see how we did compared to the target for 2021. And in some cases we’ve moved the needle along quite a ways, but maybe next time we could see the previous year so I could see how far we’ve gone relative to a previous year. And perhaps I could again then follow up just with sanitary in particular.

It seems like we went to 25 million more than was expected and perhaps just a little more detail on that specifically. How did that come about? ‘Cause I think that’s great. Again, I’m presuming you’re still on the same page, but for the benefit of those who might have turned the page, could you just reference that again?

37, I’m sorry. Thank you very much. I wonder, Ms. Barbone, oh, I’ve got two of you who are keeners, Ms.

Livingston, I’ll start with you. And then if you wish to pass that through. Your worship, thank you. I just wanted to address the first comment of the counselor which was about seeing previous years.

What council will see in the fall is the impact assessment, which is the picture of the entire quadrennial and the achievements year over year. So we do that once on the culmination of the strategic plan. So council has a good idea of what the ultimate impact of their investments and actions have been. So I just wanted to share that with the counselor and you’re quite right, Mr.

Mayor. Ms. Barbone can answer the second part of that question. We’d love to hear from her, Ms.

Barbone, please. So through the chair, I don’t have the specifics to be able to explain specifically with respect to one line item ready and at my disposal. I can certainly look to get that information and provide it at the council meeting or directly to the counselor. Thank you.

Councillor Rande-Holst, anything else? That’s fine. A direct response from my interest would be fine. And thank you very much.

I’ll turn things over to my colleagues again, but pretty great to see no gap on there. So that’s wonderful news in these numerous places. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor.

And your other comments or questions for staff? I see none. This has been duly moved and seconded with that. I will call the question.

There hold over, may be. Yes. Thanks very much. Housing the vote, the motion’s passed, 15 to zero.

That’s a testament to the great work being done by staff. Thank you very much, Ms. Livingston to you and staff for that. Colleagues, I’ll turn your attention out of the schedule items 3.1, which is the Housing Development Corporation.

This is our 2021 annual general meeting of the shareholders complete with annual resolutions that are required for this purpose, which will include as well an independent auditor’s report. And so with that, I am now gonna turn this over to Mr. Cooper. If you might have some comments and I think, and I also think Ms.

Espinoza is here too. Should some questions be there, there you are. So Mr. Cooper, can I start with you?

If you’ve got any comments you’d like to make? Yes, thank you, your worship. And through the chair, Ms. Espinoza and I are very happy to be here today to provide our yearly report on the shareholder report for HTC of 2021.

Before I turn it over to Ms. Espinoza, though, I would like to take a quick moment and say my appreciation and thanks to the HTC staff, now city staff as they’ve transitioned into the city and to Ms. Espinoza particularly for her leadership as she has been the interim CEO of HTC and a manager on the city. I wear two hats quite often and I do appreciate, I’m not the only one in that boat.

So Ms. Espinoza as well as Kim Wood and Brian from HTC, I just wanna recognize them as well in all their hard work as well as Isabel de Roca who’s a former employee of HTC that is now working with CMHC. So the work that Ms. Espinoza is gonna speak to in a couple of minutes here would not have been able to get done without those individuals.

I’ll turn it over to you, Melissa. Ms. Espinoza, if you would please, any comments you might have. Thanks very much, Craig.

And thanks to members of committee and Mr. Chair, through you, I’m very pleased to be reporting to you today. Craig and I are here reporting to you under the new structure to update you and the work led by HTC in 2021. You’ll see in your package, the 2021 audited financial statements, noting that the HTC budget will be going through ongoing revision as the financials of the corporation remain specific to the business and project activities.

It will no longer include the cost that have been patrated back to the city of London, including staff and other resources. These will be separately reported to you through other programming updates. The business activities of HTC will continue to be reported to you on a regular basis through the work that is done through the housing stability action plan and related roadmap to 3,000 updates. Given this, the slide deck presented that you have received gives you a high level update of the key work in 2021, much of which continues as we advance the affordable units created, established, or underway towards the greater goal of 3,000 units.

On slide four or page 191 of your package recognizes that the function of HTC has been a partner to our broader municipal service. Over the course of the past year, a stronger relationship was established with the housing stability services team as we continue to respond to priority and rapid housing needs during the pandemic. And most importantly, working more closely than ever before across multiple service areas through a housing enterprise action team. The following pages or 192 to 194 in your package provide more specific updates on the direct developments undertaken by HDC.

The negotiation for bonus units in advance in partnership with private developers and our support of the community-based affordable housing developments. Direct developments include the completion and rent-up of 122 baseline road, the important pre-planning work that was undertaken for 18 Elm Street, 345 Sylvan, and notably our 403 Thompson Road project that allowed us to quickly move into a second phase of the CMHC rapid housing initiative. Work continues as we ready for other lands for future development programs, investments as they become available. The final pages of our presentation reflect that the development of new affordable housing continues to advance in the challenging environment which lacks affordability for far too many Londoners.

The focus in ‘22 will be continuing pre-development activities at 1958 Duluth, supporting regeneration and advancing strategies for acquisition and assembly of lands. Our housing enterprise action team continues to look at all strategies, programs and opportunities that can be activated in advance to provide greater stability in our local housing market. In closing, I’d like this time to thank and recognize our 2021 Community Internal Partners as well as the incredible HDC team that have been part of the success of developing and maintaining affordable housing in our community. We look forward to creating more partnerships in 2022.

Thank you and both Craig and I welcome any questions that you may have. Thanks very much. I’m gonna start by looking for a motion to receive the report and then actually we’re not gonna do that yet. I do not wanna get out of myself.

I think what we’ll do instead is we’ll open this up for questions that you might have via Mr. Cooper or Ms. Espinosa. Ms.

Hopkins. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Espinosa and Mr. Cooper for the report and the great work that’s been going on and really good to see the numbers going up when it comes to affordable units in our city.

I am looking at page 193 and a question around bonusing. It’s good to see the bonus units that were negotiated in 2021 at 94. I think that’s quite an increase then what we’ve seen in the past. I do understand the bonusing is going to be taken away from us, come September, end of September.

And there’s some bonus units that are still under review. Could you sort of add, I wouldn’t wanna see these units go away and what are the plans to see how we can move them forward? Mr. Cooper and Ms.

Espinosa some comments. Mr. or Mr. Mathers ‘cause he’s now on screen and smiling, go ahead Mr.

Mathers. Through the chair, maybe I’ll just start with that ‘cause it does definitely cross a few different lines with our group. So as we’re all aware, the end of August is the end of a bonusing for all intensive purposes. So our planning and development team has been prioritizing all those applications.

We actually had a letter out to the development community many months, several months ago saying that if you wanted to be able to get forward with the current process that you need to have a submission to us. So we’re working through those. You will should expect a very long August planning and planning environment committee meeting. So we’ll be really working hard to try to get all of those applications across the goal line.

So we are working very hard on that and we’re expecting to bring a lot of units forward in that August meeting. That’s right. Yeah, thank you for that response. That’s a lot of work is going on and really appreciate the different departments working together and also hoping the development community will get their applications in and take advantage of getting these affordable units in.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or questions for the HTC team? Councillor Lewis.

Thank you, Your Worship. I feel like I’m waving from the bleachers over here but I appreciate I was able to catch your eye. It’s because you’re in a difference. You’re only directly in front of me versus the other place.

Through you to our staff and sort of picking up on Councillor Hopkins questions as well. On the, the outstanding units for Bonusing applications that are coming in, I know that we have had applications that have come before Planning Committee in some instances where the affordable units are being offered immediately in an existing build or a portion of in an existing build and then a portion in the new build, which of course gets us some affordable units online much quicker if they’re already built and as they become vacant, if they can be made available at an affordable rate, that’s somebody that we can get housed right away. So I’m wondering through you to our staff, what considerations or steps are being made, particularly as we reach the end of this Bonusing regime to get units that are, I’m gonna say move-in ready. I know they might not all be technically move-in ready, but move-in ready in another building in exchange for considerations on a Bonusing application.

Mr. Mathers. So through the chair, so there’s very specific instances when we are dealing with a developer that they have available units that we can able to entertain, I negotiated a deal like that. So we are of course very much open to that if they want to bring that to us, that we are able to try to negotiate that on a case-by-case basis.

For the most part, most of the developments that are gonna be coming forward in August are just providing Bonusing for these future units that will be created. And there is that gap that I see that we have being able to provide it in the short term. And that’s why we have our 3000 unit plan to be able to try to meet that gap. But we’re hoping that in the future, there might be more support through provincial legislation to see how this evolves, to be able to provide housing in the short term.

Councillor Lewis. Thank you. So I do have two follow up questions to that. And I’ll start with perhaps the easier one to answer first, which is we continue to see a variety of percentages of average market rate brought forward in applications.

I know I’ve certainly myself asked for lower rates in a couple of instances. So I’m just wondering if I can get a sense from staff. What is the target goal right now in terms of the percentage of affordable market rate that we’re asking for? ‘Cause I continue to see applications that come through, some as low as 70% and others at the 85, 90% range.

And so I’m not really confident that 90% is meeting or is providing a big community benefit. So what are we aiming for in these situations? Knowing of course that these are situations that we’re not gonna have much longer anyway. I’ll send this back to staff for thoughts.

Through the chair, I’m actually gonna like Craig Cooper, maybe add to that. Knowing that we don’t have a specific target, but he can provide you a little bit more details on what we’ve been doing over the last year. Mr. Cooper.

Thank you. And through the chair, I appreciate the question. I think the question brought by the Councillor is one that we are working through every day of the week, trying to negotiate the lowest depth of affordability recognizing the need in our community is something our teams across the enterprise, enterprise-wide approach do. I think though, with the use of the implementation of the 3000 unit roadmap, we’re really focused on getting the greatest depth of affordability we can for those certain number of units.

All the while recognizing we need a broad range of development to allow people to be able to move through housing choice. A unit at 90% or 80%, we can provide a supplement, short-term supplement for individuals or a long-term supplement that will make that unit affordable for them. For individuals who are on fixed income, like our social housing wait list, the average individual on that wait list can afford $400 a month. That’s 30% of their income based on our social housing wait list.

So we recognize as the city’s working through a number of our regeneration exercises through social housing, but also the end of operating agreement, we’re gonna be able to take advantage of increasing some stock in those areas. We also then have to recognize too that we can’t do it alone. And that’s where we work with our nonprofit providers. We work with the capital investments that are gonna happen through the 3000 roadmap as well as additional supplements to achieve that depth of affordability.

So I try to get as low as I can when I’m negotiating with developers and negotiating with nonprofit providers on the affordability, but we also recognize that the cost of doing business and the cost of building capital buildings is going up. We learned that at 122 baseline. We recognize where the base is, but we do try to negotiate as much as we can through the process. Thank you, Councillor Lusci, a second question.

I did, and I’ll say thank you to Mr. Cooper for that answer. And I certainly recognize, even with our own municipal projects and on infrastructure renewal, the cost of capital projects all across the board in every sector is going up. So I recognize that that’s a factor to be considered in there as well.

In terms of the number of affordable units that we’ve been able to negotiate as I align in the report, I’m wondering if staff can indicate if they have the number, they may not, but I’ve heard from some in the building development community that the number is actually very low. How many of the units that we’ve been able to negotiate are actually occupied now? How many of them are actually units that are in use as affordable units versus units that are still out on the horizon somewhere? Mr.

Mayor, if you want to start? Through the chair, I don’t have that number offhand, but I’ll maybe just see if Mr. Dickens or Craig has anything to help me and support me on that. Why don’t we start with Mr.

Cooper? Although I do see Mr. Dickens hanging on the edges of there. If you struggle a little bit, Mr.

Cooper, I think Mr. Dickens is also there as well. Thank you, and through the chair, I don’t have that number offhand either. I know we’re working through a number of tenant placement agreements with developers to be able to occupy those units, but I don’t have the number in front of me at this point.

I hate to call this tic-tac-toe, but I wonder, Mr. Dickens, can you enlighten it all? Thank you, Your Worship, and through you, unfortunately cannot elaborate, but Mr. Cooper did touch on a pretty pivotal change in our practice or advancement of our practice, and that is in the placement agreements and really working through new projects and working with developers.

And something we would like to expand even further is connecting in when projects are being developed and designed to ensure that the city is involved in the tenant placement process so that we can begin to match people to those new units that are in core housing need, and just appreciating the presentation that is on the agenda. And as Mr. Cooper mentioned in the previous question, on page 195, you’ll see the incomes required for some of the depth of affordability units that are being targeted by the city and by HDC. So I wish I had more information to provide, Mr.

Mayor, but I do not. Councillor Lewis, thank you, Your Worship. And I appreciate, and I did not have an opportunity to ask that question offline in advance, so I recognize staff haven’t had a chance to look at the numbers deeply. I’m concerned when I’m hearing as a sidebar from others in the community that it’s only single digits that are actually occupied that it’s taking a long time to actually get these units online, even though we’ve negotiated them, not that the negotiation piece isn’t really valuable because it is, but it ties back into why I was asking about our ability to get units in existing buildings today in exchange for sort of the future considerations, because the sooner we can get people into affordable units, the better.

And I know it’s taking a long time for some of these projects to get built. So as we move towards the end of the Bonusing regime, I just wanna say, recognizing that it’s a negotiation, I hope that perhaps staff are able to secure some in existing buildings now so we can start to work on this problem of getting people host. Thank you very much. I’ll call on Deputy Mayor Morgan, please.

Yes, thank you. And I’m glad the questions before were just asked because it relates to the slide. And it was even mentioned by Mr. Dickens, page 195, which I found very helpful to articulate the different affordability thresholds and the incomes associated with it.

And I wanna go back to a question that Mr. Cooper started to touch on and it was related to it, what Councillor Lewis was getting at. I see this slide as a really important piece to be combined with the line of questioning that the Councillor Lewis engaged in. And that is where are the gaps?

Like within this affordability level, it sounds to me for Mr. Cooper, like you said, there’s a lot of people at the $400, the $400 rent level that we need to be targeting. And so although we can negotiate 80% and 70% rents that’s really out of reach for a large portion of people who are looking at it. So is that the case?

And is that really where we’re trying to target as much as possible? Is in that lower $400 to, I don’t know, $500 range? Because I think we wanna be conscious of that as we’re trying to provide as much space as possible. We don’t wanna leave any sort of missing middle between the RGI regime and the affordable space.

So I don’t know if Mr. Cooper could comment on that. And I think if it’s possible in the future, anything we can do to combine this information with that area about articulating where the gaps are and where we need to target, I think would be very helpful. Mr.

Cooper. Thank you and through the chair, I appreciate the question. I would say that that lower area, that sort of low to moderate income Londoner is who we’re targeting for much of the work that we’re doing. We recognize that, as I mentioned earlier, the RGI are the rent geared to income regeneration work that LMCH is working on will help alleviate some of the extremely low rents that we need.

And it’s the partnerships that we have with nonprofit providers. And in some cases where it’s a city led development where we can fill some of that gap. There are many tools in our toolbox that we can use to help administer and mitigate some of the affordability. But when we look to stack a capital investment with a subsidy investment, you’re really then, you’re only counting that one unit for that dual tool that’s being used for that resource.

But we’re trying to be as flexible as we can, recognizing the market is where it’s at and our vacancy rates are where they’re at. But the goal in the missing middle, as we call it, is in that 550, 600 range right through to about 800. And again, cost of doing business, the cost of building buildings is very challenging to build buildings today in that range without a significant capital investment. So, you know, we’re continuing those conversations by Mr.

Cooper, the other Mr. Cooper, Patrick Cooper, and myself are meeting quite regularly in our conversations with developers and nonprofit providers as we work through the implementation of the 3,000 unit plan. Thank you, Deputy Mayor Morgan. No, I appreciate the answer.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I next have Councillor Hunt-Holst on the list. Thank you, Your Worship.

And my first question through you to our staff is about the HDC itself. There was a time when we had talked about dissolving the HDC and what’s the future of this corporation now? I can look to Mr. Mathers for that, please.

New Year, Your Worship, the future is that they have all the staff that were previously HDC are now employed in our city of London employees. So, we’re all one happy family from that regard. HDC is going to remain as a shell corporation ‘cause there’s a number of agreements that are already negotiated through the HDC. So, we will likely just start to wind it down, but it’s likely that we would still maintain it over the long term if there was any other reason to use it.

But all the staff, all of the management is through the city of London. Well, a happy family is nice, Councillor Reynolds. Thank you, and now just a question about the affordable housing units. I recall a friend in Toronto was renting a place that she was sublating from somebody who got it as an affordable unit.

Do we think that’s gonna be happening in London where somebody gets an affordable unit and then some lets it out to somebody at fair market value to make the differences an income or do we have other processes in place to see that doesn’t happen? Let’s go with you, Mr. Cooper in terms of safeguards and all. Thank you, and for the question and through you, your worship, I’ll begin this answer and then maybe look to Mr.

Mathers and his team or Mr. Cooper to sort of fill in on that. I do know that with agreements that we have through the provincial and federal government, there are annual occupancy reports and annual reports that we have to provide back to the province or the federal government on actual individual occupancy. So I don’t see that as a significant problem in our community at this point.

There are checks and balances in place with provincial and federal funding, I would suggest to be able to mitigate and sort of catch any of those instances, but it is worth noting that it may be happening in other communities and something for our teams to consider and watch for as we do our annual reporting. Mr. Mathers, anything to add? Nothing to add, Craig’s answer was perfect.

Mr. Cooper, was that a perfect answer? I’m talking about Patrick now, not Craig. Yes, it is a perfect answer.

And just in terms of the nonprofit third party community that offers also affordable housing, they undergo operational views and audits. They also do income verification. So not just with the housing that we offer, but also even through the third party nonprofit sector, there is some checks and balances that do occur. And as part of that, we do have an obligation to report to the province.

Appreciate that, thank you, customer and host. Thank you. Recently I took a little tour of the 403 Thompson site and noted that they were slowed because of a strike and so I’m wondering what the timeline for that completion is now. I wonder if I could get some direction from Mr.

Cooper timing on Thompson. Thank you, your worship and through the chair. I’ll ask Ms. Espinosa to answer that question as I believe she has that information.

If you would, Ms. Espinosa, please. Absolutely, through you, Mr. Chair, we are now looking at occupancy in February 22, which is just a month or two delayed from where we originally started, but things are progressing very quickly.

Thank you, customer and host. Great, well, that’s good to hear. I was at a webinar that was introducing the details of our 18 Elm Street property, which is exciting for a number of reasons, but I’ll note that that was a school site and I’m wondering if the HTC has got 1040 Hamilton Road on their radar, which is another school. I was at the closing ceremonies for Fairmont School, and I’ll say a fun farewell to the Fairmont Falcons, but that’s also a wonderful property.

Are we, is that one of the ones that we were looking at? I recall that we had done an evaluation of quite a few properties to see what we might pursue in terms of affordable housing. And I’m asking if that’s one of them. Mr.

Cooper, are we in a position to comment on that? Thank you, and through the chair, unfortunately, we’re not in a position to comment on any property specifically, but know that land acquisition has been identified in our report as some ongoing development and planning opportunities that our housing development team continue to explore. Customer and host, anything else? No, your worship, just as my colleagues have extend my gratitude for the work that’s been done.

And I must say I’ll be excited to see when we actually, to get a tour of one of the ones that we’ve built ourselves. I think that’ll be a great accomplishment, thank you. Thank you, I have no other speakers on the list. So colleagues in your package, we will have the presentation that we’ve gone through, the HDC’s financial statements for the year ending 2021.

And the update on the strategic area of focus for HDC. And there is a motion here for the benefit of the public that on the recommendation of the city manager, the independent auditor’s report of KPMLP for the shareholder of HDC, London, date of December 31, 2021, we received, do I have a mover for that? Councillor Fyff Miller, seconder by Councillor Layman, we’ll call the vote. Mayor Holger, I’m in favor.

Joyce, was that Councillor Hummer, it was hard to tell. It was. Thank you very much, Councillor. For the benefit of all, Councillor Hummer indicated earlier that there might be some challenge with his internet, but appreciate that very much, thank you.

Councillor Bann-Holst closing the vote. The motion’s passed 15 to zero. Motion to Londonville Sex Community Housing’s 2021 AGM, and for the benefit of all, that is begins on page two, 24. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to, there will be a recommendation at the end of this.

Before that, I’m going to ask staff if there is a report or whether you would like to entertain any questions directly. Paul, I see Paul Chisholm there. Mr. Chisholm, any initial comments before we get into Q&A or would you just like to do that?

Thank you, Your Worship. I’d be pleased to make some comments. Good. All right, sorry.

So thank you very much, Your Worship, and good afternoon, everybody. Our submission, including our annual report and audited financial statements for 2021 are included in your agenda package. Through 2021, Londonville Sex Community Housing has been keeping an eye in the future while working every day to provide clean, safe, and affordable housing to our tenants. While the pandemic has raised operating challenges for LMCH, like everybody else, has also shown a light on the inequities that exist in our communities.

With the introduction of the community board, we are pleased to once again bring the voice of tenants in the broader community to the work we do, and with their support much has been accomplished. And we also want to acknowledge the hard work of our staff at LMCH. Their dedication to the tenants we serve and the work we do in our communities has been critical through these times. With over 3,282 units of housing, we provide housing for over 5,000 tenants and include more than 1,350 children.

This housing needs to be maintained in a clean and safe environment and we’re doing our best to maintain our regular operations and maintain our service levels through this pandemic. We’re also focusing on vacancies to reduce the time it takes to turn to vacancy and maximize the occupancy across our portfolio. We’re pleased to report important gains in that area. It takes cooperation and collaboration to build stronger, healthier communities.

We are grateful to our partners who make this possible. We can’t do this alone, together we make sure our most vulnerable residents are staying connected and supported to the help that helps them thrive. This year we’re focused on building our innovative partnerships and resuming our in-person program that was put on hold and when virtual for the last two years. Moving forward, we want to focus on our community development attendant engagement strategy to amplify our tenant voice and decision making and make meaningful connections with our community at large.

With the support of the City of London, there’s a number of key initiatives that have moved forward and are having a great impact for our LMCH and the tenants we serve through the Canham Works and Housing Corporation investment with the support of City of London. We’re making significant progress as we move this historic project from planning to implementation. The legwork that was done in 2020 and earlier behind the scenes to get us ready for this construction project has let us move this project forward at a fast pace with early winds including the energy management system and supporting the variable frequency drives for our make up air units. These energy savings alone will move us very close to hitting our targets required under the CMHC program in year one.

The continuing investment in this project with site improvements, windows, doors, furnaces, and other improvements for tenants will continue to have an impact over the coming years and we look forward to getting this work underway. Our reimagined Southdale project is an exciting time for LMCH. The Southdale community has served hundreds if not thousands of families well over the past 50 years. Work is well underway to plan how to reimagine Southdale so that it meets the needs of the families and communities that we serve for the next 50 years.

This is the first new build for LMCH in almost 50 years. This will serve as a blueprint to invest in our current sites to meet the needs of tenants today and in the years to come. We are putting the final strategy in place for execution, building consensus among our stakeholders to land on the site master plan and confirming our financial plan to support this construction. COVID has had a huge impact across all of the city of London and of the communities we serve.

We’ve worked closely with our partnerships with Middlesex, London Health Unit and others to normalize as best we can how we respond to the pandemic offering vaccine clinics and adjusting our program delivery to make sure that the tenants were served as best we could. We’ve adjusted how we respond to service requests, make sure staff remain safe in the communities and are able to work safely with tenants to address their maintenance concerns. Going forward, we wanna continue this focus on making sure the needs of tenants are met and focus on the organizational health and culture to build capacity for reacting to the change that we face and to recognize the vital role of employees in the health and wellbeing of our tenants. We’ve made tremendous progress in completing capital projects to fight despite pandemic challenges including supply chain issues.

We continue to build on this momentum as we move forward with short and long-term projects, focusing moving on making capital investments that balance fundamental infrastructure improvements like elevators, generators and roofs, alongside upgrades that improve daily living, new playgrounds, walkways and shared amenities for tenants. And while the pandemic brought unexpected costs including increased cleaning, we still managed to operate a small surplus. Past investments in energy efficiency has helped reduce consumption that kept utility costs stable. We have increased our staffing through business case 19 to increase service to tenants.

And we put a push on building and maintenance expenses to make sure we were able to refresh the sites through painting, pavement, repairs, tree trimming and other work that had a direct impact on tenants who were spending themselves increasingly at home in their units and in their buildings. We will continue to focus on reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions to keep utility costs and checks in the future. As I look forward to the new year, I do so with optimism and resolve. Going forward, we’re gonna put our next strategic plan in place.

We’re gonna continue our investments in our communities, break ground and reimagine Southdale and focus on building a healthy organization to support the needs of our tenants. For over 50 years, LMCH has served the communities of London and Middlesex County by providing clean, safe and affordable housing. We’re committed to deepening these efforts to ensure lasting and meaningful impacts to contribute to the creation of healthy environment communities across the city of London and Middlesex. We’d like to extend our thanks and gratitude to our shareholder, the city of London, for your continued support and this important work.

Thank you. Well, thank you as well. Any comments or questions for Mr. Chisholm and our staff?

Recognize Councillor Lehman. Thank you very much for that report. I thought often of your organization during this time of the last few years of COVID and the extra challenges for administration and also for the tenants of our properties there. And looking at some of the numbers, it identifies the huge daily task that I know you’re facing with 22,486 service requests and still manage to do 353 refresh and restored units.

Well done. What I’d like to ask you right now is how are we standing on current units that are vacant, that are waiting to be refurbished before new tenancy, Mr. Chisholm. As we speak today, we’ve made progress on our vacancy management.

We’ve reduced the number of units that are in reverberation from a year end of 2021. We were at 133 units at sort of the last report we had. We had about 65 units that were in restoration. So we’ve reduced the number of units in restoration.

We have had a slight increase in the number of units that we’re renting to the public right now based on some just internal operational challenges. But overall, the vacancy, the number of vacant and ready units and units in vacancy turnover is reducing. And we expect to be on target at the end of Q3 to sort of get to a normalized operation. We have a vacancy target of 3%.

And we’re at about 4% right now. We expect you back at our 3% target by the end of September. Councillor Lehman. Well, the first number gave me a bit of a start, but I’m glad to see where you’re at currently and that you’re on track to that 3% mark.

So well done. Thank you. I will next call on Councillor Lewis, please. Thank you, Your Worship.

And thank you to Mr. Chisholm for the report. I know he’s put a lot of work into this and he’s also had to deal with me emailing and calling for information as well as I get up to speed on his file, having only been on the board a couple of months. So thank you to you and all of your team, Mr.

Chisholm for putting this report together. As a board member, Deputy Mayor Morgan and I get the privilege of seeing the trend line dropping on the vacancy graph each month in our vacancy report that comes to the board. So to Councillor Layman’s line of questioning, there’s definitely quite a bit of staff work going into that. And of course, we have some challenges that supply chains aren’t always friendly either right now in terms of getting some of the refurbishments done on the schedule we’d like.

Like every other organization, that’s a challenge. But through you, Your Worship, I did wanna ask Mr. Chisholm if he could perhaps share with colleagues here tonight. One of the challenges that I know we’ve had as an organization has been filling some of our staffing gaps.

And I wonder if you could just comment briefly, Mr. Chisholm on progress that we’re making in filling and shuffling around staff to fill some of the gaps that we’ve had that have perhaps not allowed us to respond quite as quickly to some of the concerns of residents as we might otherwise would like to have. Mr. Chisholm on staffing gaps.

Through the chair at our last board report, we reported we were working on nine recruitments for a total of 15 employees. We have a workforce target of 97 employees. And we are not at that target at this time. So we have been successful in increasing some of the frontline staff in maintenance repair had been a struggle for us through the pandemic, but we’ve been able to work through that, to increase that staff level, which is helping the day-to-day operations on site.

But we are running into, I think what everybody in most workforces are, we have a little bit of attrition. We have a little bit of recruitment challenges where the quality of the candidates are not what we expect and the number of candidates who are applying is reducing. So we continue to adjust. I think our focus is to get back up to that 97 target by the end of December.

But I do know that we’ve been fairly stable in our number and it is below target for the last two years. So we’re hoping that as the economy shifts and lending continues to grow, we’ll have access to the staff we need to continue to do the service we need to provide. Thank you, Councillor Lewis. That’s all from me, Your Worship.

I’ll just once again say thanks to Mr. Chisholm and his team. They’re working incredibly hard and they’ve got lots of challenges facing them, but they’re not letting that stand in the way of putting in the hours every day to start getting some results that are trending in the right direction here. Thank you very much.

Before you colleagues, we’ve had a presentation. We also have had the LMCH 2021 annual report and the 2021 housing financial statements. I’ll be looking for a mover and seconder referenced on page 224 of your package that the attached proposal bylaw, Pendix A entitled a bylaw to ratify and conform and confirm the annual resolution of the shareholder of London Law 6 community housing and be introduced at this meeting held or the meeting to be held July 5, 2022 move by Councillor Lewis, seconded by Councillor Layman, any other comments or questions? Councillor Halmer.

Thank you. Thank you, Your Worship, part of the motion is on your floor and I want to thank Mr. Chisholm and the whole team for the work that they’ve done, including the board and it’s been a very difficult time. And I think this is great progress being made in the report.

My question for Mr. Chisholm is sort of a little bit about the future and what tenants can expect as the remainder of the CMHC funding is put to work and upgrades are made, particularly in buildings like to go through the K and I mean, your kind of house complexes on booty and here on which I know are part of the CMHC investment. So from the perspective of a tenant that people live in the building, what might they expect to see over the next little while as CHC funding is put to use and builds upgrades are made? Mr.

Chisholm, can you give us some thoughts on that? Yes, through the chair, Your Worship. So tenants can expect that for those communities involved in the CMHC project and 202 McNay is a seniors building. So, you know, what tenants in the multi residential buildings can expect is to have improvements made to their hard surfaces.

They can have, they expect to see improvements in their common areas, accessibility, the washroom, the laundry room, those types of things where they use every day as common elements. They’ll also, we’ll also see an increase in each of those sites in the number of accessible units. So we’ll be building units that are more universally acceptable and more better able to accommodate tenants as they age in place and tenants with disabilities as they move in. What they can also expect is some conversations through this process with staff.

As we look at what we want to do with the CMHC project, we want to talk to the tenants to find out what they see the needs are in the building to see if that could be accommodated in the CMHC project or if there’s other funding available to get that. As we sort of look forward at this period of increased capital spending, it’s important that we do the things that matter to tenants in the work we do. Not everything can be behind the locked doors in the mechanical room. So we want to make sure that the work we do has a positive tenant impact that’s anticipated with this investment.

So they can expect conversations and general improvement of their site and general improvement of the accessibility within their building. Councillor Hummer. Thanks very much. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? I see none. This has been duly moved and seconded. We’ll call the question.

We’ll hold on and favor. Thank you. Councillor Vanholst. Councillor Vanholst, we’re just voting on the motion related to the LMCH annual general meeting of the shareholder.

Can you just, just working through that. There we go. I voted, thank you. Thank you.

Closing the vote, the motion’s passed 15 to zero. Dr. Chisholm for his report. I realized I had not in turn thanked Ms.

Espinoza, Mr. Cooper, Cooper and Mathers. There’s, it’s got a rhythm to it, but I’d like to thank all of you for providing the information you have on all of our behalfs. Colleagues, I’m not going to turn your attention to items for direction, page 265 in your package.

This is the London Community Recovery Network, Recovery Funding Business Cases. This is not dissimilar to our last SPPC meeting where we look to consider a number of business cases in this situation, there are three that we may wish to support. So what I’m going to do is this before I look for a mover on this and we are on page 265. I wonder if I might ask if staff that has any outline that they would like to provide us or be in a position to just respond to questions as our colleagues may have.

I’m happy to just start things off as we did last time. So. Here’s Mr. Thompson for the benefit of those who don’t, who aren’t aware of Adam Thompson, go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and three, Mr. Mayor. So similar to the last meeting we were at, Council has identified $10 million in community recovery funding in recognition of community recovery being a community-wide initiative. Earlier this year, Council passed endorsed a process by which community proponents can bring business cases to the SPPC for consideration.

At present, Council has allocated 5.4 million of the 10 million set aside for community recovery, leaving 4.6 million still available to be allocated. And we have the proponents for the three business cases before committee for discussion tonight, available to answer questions from committee members. Thanks very much, I wonder if colleagues, I think it’s most appropriate that we ask any questions that we might have of Mr. Thompson and staff with regard to the cases that are put before us.

Councilor Vanholz, go ahead. Thank you, Your Worship. I just want to see these seem like great ideas at a reasonable price. So I’m happy to support them and we’ll move that at the appropriate time.

Well, you’re the only one on the list. So it might well be an appropriate time. There’s, will there be a seconder? And then I think we’ve got some questions, Councillor Lewis, seconding.

Councillor Hopkins, go ahead, please. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I’m supportive of these three business cases.

It’s, I can see them being quite important to our city as we go through recovery. I do have a quick question about case number two. And case number three, it, case number two is going to be an annual full day expo. So I would assume that means we’ll be doing this on a yearly basis.

And I just want to know the contribution that the city will be making about 100,000. Would that be just for one year only and secondly, the question as it relates to the business case number three, which is a back-to-back event, it being a conference, is that going to be done yearly or is it just a one time, just want to get a little bit more information? I see Mr. Cooper screen on and I also have Mr.

Thompson on audio, so Mr. Cooper, do you want to give that a thought or shall we transfer to Mr. Thompson, Adam? I’m happy to take a thank you and through you, Mr.

Mayor. So four questions relating to business case two. We have Kristin Duber from the London Chamber of Commerce who can speak to the content within the business case. And then depending on how you want to handle it, the Councillor’s question around business case number three would be handled by Mr.

Crossman in the London music office. I thought I heard, and I’m not here to put words in the Councillor’s mouth, Mr. Thompson, what I thought I heard was whether this was a one year or a multi-year commitment and perhaps Councillor Hopkins can you just clarify that please? Yes.

She clarifies that, so I think, Ms. Duber, can you respond to that whether this is anticipated as a one or a multi-year situation? And then if it is multi-year, it begs the question, Mr. Thompson, whether we as a council are looking to make commitments beyond year one.

Go ahead, Ms. Duber. Certainly, so it is the intention of the London Chamber of Commerce to make this an annual event. In our business case, we have only asked the city to support it for the first year.

It is our hope that the event will be very successful and will be able to attract more sponsorships after that. Obviously, we may ask the city for sponsorship in future years, but that is not a necessity of what we’ll do, or it won’t necessarily be $100,000 either again, but just to get the event off the ground. And then I think the remainder of the questions were from Mr. Crossman.

So at this point, it’s a one-time ask. That’s what I’ve heard as it relates to business case number two. That’s correct. And in terms of business case number three, Mr.

Crossman, can you provide some wisdom with regard to the ask as it relates to one-time or multi-year? Yes, through the chair, this is a one-time ask. And it was an ask to sort of help commemorate our one-year anniversary of being a UNESCO City of Music, and it will be foundational to help us secure bids moving forward for some other UNESCO events we’re exploring. Councillor Hopkins.

Yes, I appreciate the clarification, thank you. Perhaps the council’s band can come back together for the first annual Councillor Turner, you have a question. Thank you, Your Worship. Reading business cases two and three, I actually kind of coalesced a little bit with a podcast.

I was listening to a couple of days ago on my commute into work in my main efforts to try and improve my French. There is a really interesting story about La Fett de la Musique in France. And when Mitterrand was president, he embarked on a very cultural journey to try and do a bit of a cultural renaissance through the country. During 21st marks, La Fett de la Musique.

And basically, it’s just designated as that day, and people do music everywhere. Whatever street corner, where there’s formal concerts, there’s really informal concerts, there’s little block parties, and it sounded like a really fascinating event. And it grew into something a lot more global, over 700 cities across the world, celebrated La Fett de la Musique. And there might be an opportunity as I was reading this for us to try and tie into something that’s a little bit more international as well, to try and find the date that this lands on.

And imagine there’s probably some thoughts in this. It will evolve over time. And as kind of itching to talk with Mr. Crossman about this one, when I heard it and lo and behold, here it is in our agenda package.

So I think this has quite a bit of an opportunity. It shows some synergies between our UNESCO designation, the raw talent that we have in the city, and an opportunity to really bring neighborhood and people together. So what I heard, Mr. Crossman, that Councilor Turner asked is if we could convince France and 700 other cities to move to our annual date.

I might be miswording that slightly. Probably no need to respond. Any other comments or questions, colleagues? Then do we move the second, then we’ll call the question.

Can I hold that in favor? Thank you, Council Member. Closing the vote, the motion’s passed 14 to zero. Thank you, colleagues.

I’d like to thank Ms. Duver for her participation and Mr. Crossman as well. And in particular, Mr.

Thompson, thank you very much as well. We appreciate this very much. Colleagues, I’m going to turn your attention now to our deferred matters and additional business 5.1 of our agenda. And I’m quite pleased to have as a delegation, Mr.

Mike Wallace. And I can’t quite tell someone there with a beard and glasses. Someone looks fairly familiar there. And Mr.

Wallace, who is from the London Development Institute has a presentation you’d like to make. Your shared presentation, gentlemen, is five minutes in the introductions and all that you wish to make. We’re at your pleasure, thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, Mr. Mayor. And I am joined by with Jared from the London Home Builders Association. And we are here tonight to talk to you briefly about the report that we have sent in for your review.

And we do appreciate you, Mr. Mayor and the Deputy Mayor on their efforts to getting on this agenda, which I think was appropriate considering that we were hearing from the housing development corporation or the new division within the city. And housing was obviously a big issue on this agenda tonight. So you have the materials in front of you.

We did a report that we called London a place to call home. It’s a second report. We brought a report earlier about what is happening in terms of development with outside of London and how it’s affecting London. And we had that was Mr.

Moffat did that report for us. And so part of our command was to come back with some recommendations on what we think could work in terms of improving the supply of housing in the London market. So the report in front of you today, we’re going to go really quickly to the actual recommendations. You know, it’s generate some discussion.

Make sure you understand where the industry is positioned. We think where there are some mutually beneficial items within this report that we’re presenting that we can work on together. It’s frankly a bit of us putting on the record our position and holding us as an industry and you as the city and city staff accountable for some of the reports that have come through and things that we think that could be done in the timeframe that has been outlined. We think it’s important for all of us to be working together on this supply issue of housing in this community.

We did do a very brief, I’m going to skip over it. We did brief a review of what the federal government and the provincial governor are doing. And as you know, we did that report on growth of London outside of London reports to show that London was not immune to this issue. We also had the poll which I sent around to everyone that we did on the housing crisis to make sure that Londoners that we knew that Londoners felt that there was a housing crisis and the poll clearly came back indicating that that was one of their top issues.

And it was one of the top issues during this last provincial election that just ended at the beginning of this month. In the report, we talk about what the consequences are of this crisis and leave that for you to read. We want to remind you that a lot of our work that we do deals a lot with supply, but doesn’t really necessarily reflect what actual demand is and demand often is way higher than what we can actually supply. And we want to make that clear.

We want to reiterate that our industry, the construction industry, the development industry was one of the ones that was able to operate through the recent issues we had with COVID over the last number of years. And in fact, if you look at the city revenues, you had property tax, you had support from other levels of government. And the only other area that was generating revenue for the city was the development department and the building department. So we are an economic engine, a very large economic engine here in London and across the province and in the country.

We do have a series of recommended recommendations and we’re going to focus tonight in the last few minutes here on the ones that are what we would consider directly London related and just because we only have five minutes. Again, you have about two minutes left. Oh, well, yeah, quit looking at your watch, Mr. Mayor.

The recommendations one, two and six. So we broke it into two areas, policy and process. And in the policy areas, you are, the city’s actually doing a recommendation one, recommendation two and I believe recommendation six, right? Yeah.

And actually we have a meeting on number six on the permit ready law program tomorrow. All we’re saying when those recommendations is that we want to work with the city. We agree with their deadlines that they put out in their reports and that we want to make sure those happen. Recommendation three on the policy is, I have the report here.

You did a building vacancy report. We want to make sure that the building, the landowners and the building owners are at a table at the city downtown. We think downtown is tremendous opportunity and need for resident residential development. And we need to be there at that table.

And I apologize, 60 seconds left, gentlemen. And there’s an opportunity for some questions and answers. Right, and we would appreciate an extension if that’s possible. Actually, respectfully, there will not be, but there will be an opportunity for questions and answers, I promise.

Okay, so in that case, I’m going to skip to policy number five and I’m going to let Jared speak to the adoption of the 3% annual assessment growth ready. Sure, thanks, Mike. I’ll be brief here. This recommendation, as Mike spoke to earlier, speaks directly to the investments that have come into our municipality, largely as a result of our industry, the home builders and development industry, and specifically having opportunities within planning, economic development, and the building division to have some of that money go back directly into enhancing those services in those divisions, because we know those areas have struggled quite significantly, especially with the ability to permit efficiently and process timely.

So those are definitely key areas we want to highlight and focus on. So what do we have left, a minute, Mr. Mayor? You are done.

However, firstly though, I say to Mr. Zayfmann and Mr. Wallace, thank you for this. The information you provided was in all of our packages, and I know you’re staying by, should there be some questions that we would be happy to answer any questions, Mr.

Mayor. I don’t know why I thought that would be the case, but I was confident comments or questions for either Mr. Wallace or Mr. Zayfmann.

I see, Councilor Turner, go ahead, please. Thanks, Your Worship. Mr. Wallace, Mr.

Zayfmann, thank you for coming today, and thanks for your submission. As it goes through the recommendations, the recommendations seem generally reasonable. I think my first question, I think, might be to ask back to the industry, what are you committed to do? We’ll take a look at these, I think, as you said, much of it is already in action.

A lot of the delays, a lot of the delays and hold-ups involved with development applications, are when applications come forward that are not consistent with the policy framework, and the applicants may end up in a bit of a debate and work with staff to try and reconcile those differences, but it’s often ends up being put into, at our feet, to say that it’s the city’s fault, and we’re the ones that are still in walling and delaying and causing the issues. Is the industry ready to come forward with, and for the most part, let me recognize, at least, for the vast majority of the applications, they come forward consistent with the application framework and what’s required under the policies. But how do you, as an industry, help to work with your group and the ones the groups that you represent, to be able to help bring more approval-ready files before the city and council? Let’s ask our guests.

Okay, so I appreciate the question, and, you know, I’ve been here many times, I don’t get too many questions, so this is a real honor for me to be able to answer question. Let me start with overall, to Councillor Turner’s point, that sometimes, and he made a good point, it’s not every application that has this issue, that on occasion, but we worked hard, as an industry, with staff on finding solutions that, for example, brought through a settlement talk conclusion to the London Plan appeals. So there were some things in there that whether it was, I would say we came to the table as an industry on the environmental issues, and the city came to the table on the high density residential issues that were in the London Plan. We are committed to working with the city on items, and I’ll give you just a couple of two examples.

One that was highlighted tonight, and I’ll leave it to last, but the one before that, one of our recommendations is the bar coding of applications, and that says, well, what do you mean by that? Well, we don’t know often where an application is and whose desk’s on and where it is within the process. A system that allows both accountability from us as because often applications get sent back to us for their detail, other consultants’ reports, you will be able to track where the application is and who has it. We’ll be able to track when it’s in that city or at the Conservation Authority or out of third party opportunity.

And what we are saying is that we would like to be at the table to help find and develop that kind of system to be able to allow for better management of applications through the process. Nothing to do with what the answer will be, whether it’s for a dancer or what changes need to be, but actual process improvements. The one other recommendation, for example, that we have here is that we think that as an industry, we need to be at the table to talk about what the opportunities are to help on the affordability issue. There was discussion tonight about bonuses going away.

We know from the previous city report that in the current framework, IZ is not as feasible here as we may have hoped, may be downtown with some incentives. What we’re saying is that there’s going to be a gap between now and then. We are talking at the DC stakeholders committee about the potential of affordability housing development charge, but we think there is real opportunity, real opportunity for us and the not-for-profit sector housing providers in this community, which are excellent providers. They are very lucky in London to have the skill set and the quality of not-for-profit housing providers organizations that exist here.

We need to be at the table with the city, with them, to see if there are other opportunities for our industry to be supporting the affordability issue. Because considering that the deep affordability issue is really what most people think about. I’m going to stop you there, Mr. Wallace.

I’m going to ask you to keep your answers good and tight because we have a number of questions still to go. Oh, good. Councilor. So we’re willing to, that’s the kind of thing that we are, as Councilor Turner’s point about, what the industry we’re willing to do, we’re more than willing to be at the table to provide ideas and work with the city and others to find solutions to these issues.

Thank you. Any other comments or questions, Councilor Turner? I’ll ask them later just to allow other people to talk as well. Thanks very much.

I have Councillor Hopkins next, please. Yeah, thank you. And thank you for your delegation. And I completely agree we all need to work together with that.

And I see the seven recommendations that are in front of us. I, other than number seven, I really don’t see moving forward with these recommendations, how the community is involved. I know in number seven, there is a reference to the not-for-profit sector. But I just would like to know how, what choices people in our city can have and participate and give comments to not only residents that own their property, but tenants.

I just would like to see how the community is going to be engaged in these recommendations. So we’re talking community engagement, Mr. Walz, Mr. Safeman, as it relates to your suggestions.

Thank you and through the chair to the Councillor. I’ll be frank, I think this report is certainly a helpful insight for the community generally. But as far as the recommendations themselves, these are really critical between ourselves and City Hall. I think those are the ones that are critical focus in making sure that we’re able to get more housing supply online in a more timely fashion and ensure that as a result of that, as time is money in a lot of our processes, that housing comes on in a faster fashion so that it is more affordable.

As far as community engagement, there are a number of different ways that we interact with the city currently and with the community on a number of different committees and task forces where a lot of input from the community is taken into account as policy is shaped. But this is really focused and directed towards more internal mechanisms within the city. So certainly more community engagement can come in different ways, but our recommendations are really focusing on making sure there’s efficiency and expediting housing supply really. So thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Roberts. Yeah, that’s it for now, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hamou. Oh, there we go, I got it.

Just have to press it hard. Thank you and through the chair. I have a question, there it is. So we were looking, I was looking this morning at some inflation numbers and we know that inflation this year’s gone up from May to May, 7.7%.

How do you think that’s gonna impact your projects going forward and will it impact timing budgets? Can you give us a little bit of a prognostication on that? I see Mr. Wallace rushing to the microphone.

Yes, so it’s a very good question. Thank you very much. The economics currently of today in terms of inflation and interest rates has had some influence on the makes our projects more expensive. There’s just no affordability challenges even higher.

On the interest rate, the affordability for the consumer, for the buyer is even harder. So it isn’t that demand has ended. It demand may have shifted slightly. What somebody was able to afford based on an interest rate of 2.9% and what they can afford at 4.4 is significantly different.

That doesn’t mean they’re not interested in housing. And the effect of inflation on the rental market could be fairly significant. So in terms of cost recovery in that area. So we are well aware of the economics.

It has, you know, you got to be careful with what the media is, how it’s portrayed. It definitely has made a difference in terms of the amount of activity in the sense that houses now often, when I talk to my friends who are in the retail business, you know, used to sell in a few hours or a few days now take a week, maybe two. We’re not quite back to pre-COVID times in terms of where we were, but there’s still multiple apps where are bids at different houses and so on. And we need to remind council that even before COVID, the London real estate market was on fire.

And even if we get back to pre-COVID times and not the craziness we’ve had for the last year or so, it’s still a supply issue. We still have a tremendous supply issue both for those who want to buy their home and those who need to rent one or want to rent one. And so those factors in terms of interest and inflation are affecting the industry, but overall in the bigger picture, the demand for the supply of housing is strong today as it was a few months ago. Thank you, Mr.

Wallace. Councilor Omu. Thank you, that’s all for me. Thank you, Councilor Unhost.

Yes, thank you, Your Worship. So I’ve got a couple of questions about a number of items. First with the processes number one and five. So we’re looking at electronic submissions and barcodes.

I think that tracking system with barcodes would be is an excellent idea, just in terms of us providing transparency and having that accountability there. The electronic submissions is also great. I know that London Hydro had implemented some automated approvals. And so I’m wondering through you to our staff, how close are we to getting some of these implemented?

I believe that we were working on some processes. Thank you, I’ll have Mr. Mather’s respond to that, but colleagues, I just want to bring to your attention. This has been a recent report that has come through LDI for our consideration, and we may be asking staff to go and provide some comments on this.

So I’m just going to ask colleagues to be mindful, all of us, that that might well be one of the outcomes that you choose to consider is to ask staff for a response to all of this. And so to do this, sorry, tonight, I’m not sure as effective as it would be in the whole, but Mr. Mathers, you’re here to answer the question I presume. Through the chair, on this item specifically, as part of our streamlining efforts, it is one of the paramount items that we’re trying to be able to have a good above average and ideally a very well-documented tracking system.

So if you do recall, there was a report that outlined enhancements to streamlining of our development system. So that’s something that we are currently working on and actually engaging with the industry next week on. So this is something we are working on. The barcode aspect of it, it’s likely to be an ID-based system instead of a barcode, but I think what they’re getting at is we’ll be able to deliver on.

So we are working on that currently. Thank you, Councilor Unhost. Yes, thank you very much. And of course, Your Worship, I think, is a great suggestion to refer this to staff for their comments, but since we have our guests here, I might ask them about their policy regarding 3% of the assessment growth going to planning and development.

How did you arrive at that finger? Let me do that. Okay, so Mr. Wells, thank you, Mr.

Mayor, thank you for the question. And look at every year, your assessment growth report comes true and there’s business cases for about, it’s averaged over the last number of years, about $10 million. And yes, the department could come forward with business cases, whether for staff or for other programming or studies. But what we’re saying is that, why would we want the revenue generating department to have to compete against the fire department, the social services department?

So we came up with, so it’s about 300,000 that could be used for studies, it could be used for staff because it’s not one time money, this goes into the base, it’s new assessment growth, and that could be used for the building department, for building inspectors, it could be used for in the planning department, for any studies that need to be done. We just think that this is a revenue generating department that has generated revenue year after year, including during the recent years during COVID. And that the city should be reinvesting in those areas where revenues are being generated and hopefully that would turn even more revenues for the city in the future to be able to use for other services. So we just came up with 3%, we thought it was a reasonable amount.

If you want to make it five, I’m happy to have that. But we just think it should be a policy, some of that money that is generated from that department and from the building department, be reinvested in that department. Councilor Van Holst. Thank you.

So I’m going to look at policy recommendation number one now, is the comprehensive study to review the urban growth boundary to commence immediately. And at first, if I can, your worship through you to our staff, when did we intend for that review to take place? Fair question, but I’m going to again, say to staff when, or to colleagues, that if we have questions who want to direct to staff as a result of the presentation, we can certainly do that, Mr. Mathers, you’re on the line.

Through your worship, we are currently undertaking a comprehensive review process. Part of the complexity of it relies on information from the census, the most detailed information. So we are working through that, but our expectation was to have that comprehensive review done for the end of 2023. So it aligns pretty closely, as far as the comprehensive review portion of it.

Councilor Van Holst. Okay, well, thank you. So it… Mr.

Van Holst can answer the question. So on this point, actually, the question was not directed to you, Mr. Wallace. So no, Councilor Van Holst, please go ahead.

And I’m never trying to be rude with you, Mr. Wallace. I just want to direct it accordingly. Yes, and thank you.

So your worship, I just wanted to check to see when we were doing that, to see why they might wish this to be moved up. But given, is there a gap, or is this recommendation really just in alignment with what staff are doing already? You’re directing that to Mr. Wallace, are you Councilor?

Okay. And I’m sure he’ll give us a tight answer. That’s exactly what the recommendation is. It’s to be on the record that we support the comprehensive study, and that we will be actively happy to be involved as the industry as needed.

And we agree with the 2023, the end of the year deadline, as has been presented by staff to report. So it’s just to be on the record, yeah. Thank you. And an accountability issue.

Thank you. Councilor Van Holst. Your worship, thank you for the opportunity to answer some questions. I see that Deputy Mayor Josh Morgan has just ended up and maybe there are some others, so I’ll turn the floor over.

Thank you very much indeed. Deputy Mayor Morgan does have his hand up. Go ahead, please. Yes, thank you, Your Worship.

I wanna concur with some of what my colleagues have said. I think the appropriate path forward here is to refer this report to our staff, so that they can report back at a future relevant meeting for response to it. I would say given the recommendations, and as has been mentioned a number of these things are being worked on by our staff in various ways, and it seems to me like there’s a dialogue that can occur here, there’s a discussion, and there’s an opportunity to work together on the municipal policy recommendations. I don’t think I’ll make that motion yet, ‘cause I’ll just let colleagues know in about nine minutes, I’ll have to leave the meeting.

My oldest daughter is graduating from grade eight tonight, so I’m gonna go join her for that, but I would be supportive of that direction if that’s direction SBPC went. I do wanna make a comment though. I know that in the provincial section of the report, talking about opportunities for the provincial government can take, I think that we’re Southwestern Ontario, and there is a section that talks about the uniqueness of our city and other cities of our size outside of the GTAH area. I think we have found that some of the general policies that the provinces put in place don’t always work in London.

As was mentioned in the report, bonusing was working quite well here. I know it wasn’t working as well. In Toronto, given the level of involvement that their councilors had in the decision-making on that, but here it seemed like our staff were making good bonusing decisions, and it was working quite well. That tool is being taken away.

We know that we asked for inclusionary zoning permissions to be adjusted by the province, because again, we need the opportunity to look outside of the primary transit zones in some of our other CIP zones and other places for this. So I see this as an opportunity for us, although it’s in the provincial section, to potentially work together on these initiatives as well, where it aligns, and where the municipality and the industry might be looking to advocate to the provincial government changes. So those are the comments that I have. I don’t have any questions.

I look forward to the other discussions, and in general, I think it’s a good report, and our staff can respond to it at the right point in the future. Well, with any good fortune, Deputy Mayor, you may have an opportunity to move the motion. I know you’ve got a few minutes before you have to depart for your daughter’s graduation. Any other comments or questions that colleagues would wish to make?

Councillor Turner. Thank you, sir. So just a few kind of comments and perhaps a question in here too, but I think that the discussion, the ongoing discussion about housing, housing affordability, housing supply, and how we develop as a city is really important. And I think the collaboration between the city and our industry partners and our agencies and commissions as well is going to be key to this.

My frustrations with these discussions is often that it seems to pit the responsibility often lands in the city’s lap in here. And the slide of London residents are worried the public square survey. I mean, it asks questions that just I would say are a little irresponsible, right? Like a question was a 77% of the participants asked said they want to see the approvals process more efficient.

As if regular Londoners have any sense of what the approvals process is like and what’s involved in the approvals process. It’s a general broad statement and it’s frustrating to see that again, the city almost villainized in this, right? The housing prices as it’s being stated is certainly one of affordability. We’ve seen housing costs across the country and further afield, not just in London, not just in Canada, but in other countries as well.

It’s not unique to us. And to land it at the feet of municipalities as both the province has done. And it sounds like industry does from time to time. It is a little frustrating because we are partners in this.

So I take the spirit of the policy recommendations that are being presented here in the spirit of collaboration. But the releasing of this public square report, again, only serves to frame the city as the villain in this. And I don’t like that. And so I want to make that rather clear.

I think I asked right at the beginning, okay, we’ve got our role in it. What’s industry’s role in this too? And Mr. Wallace, you talked about the stakeholders and property owners in the core.

Property speculation is a huge concern in this and how lands are locked from development because people are sitting on them waiting for the price to go up. And I’d be interested to know how we collaborate on that. So that we release some of those locked and speculative lands for development so that we can actually, we’ve got all these temporary use parking lots, for example, and a number of other buildings as well. So it’s going to be key for us to be able to work together to solve that.

Some of those who are sitting on those lands and properties are members of LDI. Mr. Safeman, are you going to take that or will we have Mr. Wallace take that?

Mr. Wallace can certainly comment on the LDI members specifically. But I will say just in broadly regards to how do we come to the table with this? What is the industry’s role in this?

How are we participating? What’s our stake in this? How are we going to provide or what’s the partnership here? And I understand the concerns as well with the poll.

I will say that I think part of our collaboration here is also making sure that this information is well understood. And that’s what we’re doing today is trying to make sure that this is brought to council’s attention. So that staff is aware as well of the public concerns. And frankly, this is something that we as an industry, as home builders are trying to collaborate with the city on trying to find optimal solutions to some of these problems.

And unfortunately, oftentimes these problems and challenges and solutions lie with the municipality. And we are trying very diligently to work with our municipal partners. As I think you may have heard from staff, we’re already working on a number of different ways that we’re trying to partner. As far as specific individual owners, I would say that we’re very fortunate in London that’s not happening on a significant basis.

And I’ll let Mr. Wall’s comment on LDI members. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you for the question.

I’m not sure which LDI member the councilor is referring to. Happy to share afterwards whose member and who isn’t at this point. But I just want to point out on June 7th at this previous SPC meeting, you had a report on inventory of current actions addressing core area land and building vacancy. And I don’t recall as LDI or any of my members which might have happened, but I don’t know, ever being asked to comment on building vacancies downtown and on the office piece.

So all we’re saying here, Councillor Turner, is that we want to be at the table. We want to help, we want to make things happen. Downtown London has a tremendous opportunity with all the things that are happening from the UNESCO destinations in music city to the entertainment area that the mayor has proposed. It needs to mix of residential and commercial and office to be viable in the long run.

But when the action teams met three times over six week period to discuss how effectively addressed the council objective, they were all council staff teams. I think all we’re asking for is that please, please reach out to us and see if we have some solutions. Look at, one of the items is a land owners, downtown land owners, I’m calling it down so it could be core area, working group, to look at what really, if you can’t get the land owners to do something, nothing will happen. And we need you at the table, we need others at the table and in terms of other organizations within the city, whether it’s the BIA’s, the Chamber of Commerce, what other groups you think is appropriate and let’s ham or something out, but we need to be at the table.

And all of our recommendations is really putting out to council that we are a willing organization to be at the table. We will not always agree, absolutely the truth, but there are solutions that we can find collectively together and we need to be there. Thank you both. Any other questions for Councilor Turner?

Thank you, Your Worship. No, I think that really generally does it. I appreciate that, Mr. Wallace.

I think the city makes quite a bit of effort to try and get both the home builders and LDI to the table for a lot of the consultations and your point is, is well taken and that’s why I said I think your recommendations are generally reasonable. I think we just need to be cautious in the way we frame things. I think the affordability question, the time period of the way things are and we have to be careful that we’re not framing this as a way to, I mean, it talks about the permit process, sorry, zoning and things like that, having a bit more latitude and things. I think we need to have some latitude in places, but it’s at the risk of eroding some of those key protections that we have, whether that’s environmental protections or otherwise.

So it’s going to be an ongoing discussion. We’ve seen over the past few years that we have not seen growth to the degree that was projected in the projections that are the basis for the DCs, all those studies. And now recently, just in the past year, we’ve seen it meet that. So those are key pieces.

Growth forecasts are really important for us to be able to figure out what infrastructure we need and how to support the industry and as it moves forward to. Thanks very much, so colleagues, I just let you know that both, as is my way, I like to advise you when we know that counselors had to excuse themselves. The Deputy Mayor and Councilor Van Mirberg and I don’t think they’d mind me saying they both excused themselves due to a graduation. Not theirs, apparently not.

But where do we go from here, Councilor Lehman? Thank you and good comments. I’d just like to continue on kind of the same vein as Councilor Turner and Councilor Morgan. You know, the development community and industry is one is a great economic driver of the city.

But in these times with housing forefront in all of our minds, they play an even greater role. I’ve been encouraged over the last number of years to see a closer collaboration with the city and the industry, specifically in the development of the London Plan. I think the challenges that we’re gonna face in the next coming years to provide the housing, to try to keep up with demand, requires that cooperation to continue and the dialogue to continue. In a healthy way, respecting what Councilor Turner highlighted.

So I’d like to go down the path where W. Mayor Morgan was before he had to leave the meeting and move a referral for staff consideration and also to receive the document from out the end. So for, I’m not here to paraphrase your words, but to receive the report and request staff to respond at a future meeting? Yeah, I believe the— Mayor Morgan, how’s the word?

Clerk, how close are we? ‘Cause before we look for, is there a seconder for that? I see Councillor Playfmiller. So with that, we’ve had a lot of commentary and questions.

I’ll ask the clerk when that is up. It’s in, so it’s an E-Scribe colleagues and the final comments are questions. I see Councillor Cassidy, go ahead, please. Thanks, Mr.

Mayor. I have a question actually for the delegation. We know that we need more housing stock. We know we need more residential units based on the growth that we are experiencing, that we expect to experience.

But I have a question, and it goes along with sort of some of the comments from Councillor Turner. And it goes back to the responsibility of the stakeholders, the people that are represented, the groups that are represented by both LDI and London Home Builders. I know in Ward 5 alone, I have multiple lots that have been approved some many years ago. Some going back to before I ever took office in 2014, the rezoning has taken place, official plan amendments taken place, and the land just sits there.

So again, what are the groups that you represent? How are they going to respond to that? How are they going to get units online? So you’re talking about the process for things that haven’t even been approved yet, things that haven’t even come forward as an application yet.

Yet we’ve had many applications that have been approved and no building is happening. So how are we going to speed it up on your side too? Mr. Wallace, Mr.

Safem. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through the Chair and to the Councillor. I think we have a responsibility certainly as individuals at the heads of our organizations, and we certainly do actively work with our members to ensure they know the importance of how critical housing supply is right now.

And frankly, I would say that the majority or most all of our members recognize that and are trying actively to get more housing units online. I can’t speak specifically to the individual property you’re referencing, and there certainly are times where that does happen, but from my membership, I mean, housing supply is critical. We’re working every day on trying to get that better and improved. And frankly, it’s more, those are one-offs and they’re in our estimation, way more projects, whether it’s their site plan, permits through building division that get lost in black holes, depending on zoning.

I mean, there’s a number of different ways where during the process of a development that things get delayed and delayed and issues take place. And we’re trying in all these different areas to make sure that there’s our groups at the table to make sure we’re having those conversations to improve those timelines and improve those processes. And I certainly agree that we as a Homeville Association Development Institute actively work in and work with the lobby our members to make sure that they’re getting everything online as fast as they can. And I think if we go back and tell that to them, they would say, we’re going as fast as we can, and we’re hitting barriers and we need to help get those removed.

The other thing, Councillor Cassidy, is that LBI represents 15 of the largest developers in town. We don’t represent absolutely everybody. And we have indicated through the JMS program and other opportunities with staff that if they run into a development that is not moving forward as was planned and things are in place and nothing is happening as an industry organization, we’re more than willing to if you’re willing to share who it is, and that isn’t an issue to knock on a door and to do our share of encouraging. But that is not available to us to be able to do at this point.

So LBI is here often, I’m here often and we do represent a large majority of the developers in town, but we do not represent absolutely everybody. And we need to work with the city and are willing to work with the city to go to locations and to individuals, find out what’s happening. ‘Cause it affects everybody based on the JMS program on when the just in time delivery of infrastructure is to happen and if it gets stalled somewhere because nothing has happened, that affects us further down the line. Thank you, Councillor Cassidy.

So just follow up, comment to that. I appreciate that and I appreciate that. So two of the spots I’m talking about are two of the biggest developers in town. And I will tell you, I have great relationships with these developers and I speak with them and I speak candidly and I actually spoke with one of them today.

So I do know some of the things that are stopping them from developing and there are things like supply chain issues. They are things like even supply chain for trades and workforce. I get that, I understand. Once a rezoning as former Councillor Zayfmann knows, once the rezoning application process is through, once the site plan application process is through, it’s out of our hand.

Council can’t force the developer to develop and we do understand the business decisions that go into what pieces of their lands they develop and when. So I’m just presenting at you to show you, to just sort of cement what Councillor Turner was saying. We are all in this together. And we can all start pointing fingers all over the place and every single stakeholder in this issue has an anecdotal experience, whether it’s a tape experience or whether it is a delay on the part of a developer experience through the application process even.

Sometimes it is in the best interest of an applicant to delay that application. And sometimes there are strategic reasons for doing things like that. But we are all in this together. I don’t expect us to sit around a campfire and sing kumbaya, but it is very important to not lose sight of that.

I know we have some very wonderful, amazing people on staff. As I said, I have wonderful relationships with the developers that have brought applications through Ward 5, not always very welcome applications either by the constituents in Ward 5. But a big part of the problem I know we’re at City Hall right now is a staffing problem. That’s not something that assessment growth funding is going to solve because City of London is competing with municipalities across the country for these same staff members.

So I just want to add my voice to the caution raised by Councillor Turner that we don’t start pointing fingers or continue to point fingers at each other. And rather I support the referral that’s been put on the floor because it is important and imperative that you, Mr. Zehman and Mr. Wallace, that you and the people you represent and the organizations you represent continue to work with our City staff to find these solutions together.

Thank you, Councillor Cassidy. That was my mom lecture. I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor, but thank you so much.

Councillor Hopkins, please. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I really appreciate the comments from Councillors here as we sort of receive this report.

I have mixed feelings here and I think I’ll just follow up with Councillor Cassidy’s comments about the need to work together and the importance. I think that’s what we all want. We also know that every municipality is experiencing the same concerns that we have here when it comes to housing in our city, not only in our province, but in Canada. And if you look globally, you’ll hear the same concerns.

And if anything tonight, it’s good to have this conversation. I’m not sure if this is where it should be at this committee. I have doubts that it should have gone maybe to other committees for a report back. But we kind of keep it really open here and I’m feeling uncomfortable about that.

And the reason I’m feeling uncomfortable about this process that we’ve started, and now we have a referral back, is that we’re creating this situation that may not lead us anywhere. And that bothers me a little bit because we’ve heard tonight the problems in the industry, in the economy, inflation. It goes on and on and on, land availability, the trades, the experience of consultants in the industry. I know municipalities are fighting within one another trying to get staff.

And here we go, referring something back that we know we’ve undertaken a number of these recommendations. And where is this leading? I’m not exactly sure about that. I just want to be very transparent.

Not sure how I’m going to go with the supporting this motion, but I really think it’s really important that we understand what we are referring and what we expect back. I had problems with the poll that was undertaken. Council Turner spoke to it. But the other problem I had with that was that it wasn’t even a London company that did that poll.

Somehow that bothers me. As we talk about housing in our city and the need to work together, not only as a city and the development community. And I think we’re doing a good job. We could probably do a better job.

We all know that. I’m all open to having more of a dialogue and a conversation. But I think it’s really important that we do not give false hope here. It’s something that I want to be as transparent as possible.

And again, I have dealt about this recommendation. Just as we talk about the development industry and the city of London here, we are missing out on conversations and input from our boards, advisory groups, commissions, and most important our community. Where’s they’re saying what they would like to live in? So all these questions I have, I do appreciate being here.

And I do appreciate comments from my colleagues. I really want to know and understand what they think. And if anything, this has created a conversation within Council. So thank you.

Thank you, colleagues. There’s a motion on the floor that has been moved and seconded. And unless there’s any other comments, Councillor Turner. I know.

I know. My apologies. It’s a point of privilege, actually, if I may. Oh, please go ahead.

Yeah, and it’s actually in apology to Mr. Wallace. And I made assumptions about his membership and made a statement about that. He corrected later in his statements.

And so I just want to acknowledge that. And I hate to make inaccurate statements at Council. And so I’d like to make sure I correct that. And that’s what I’m doing right now.

So my apologies, Mr. Wallace. Dutifully noted, and I can tell you, your mayor often makes statements that are a little interesting from time to time. But thank you, Councillor.

I’m sure that’s sincerely appreciated. Colleagues, there is a motion on the floor. Are there any other comments or questions of colleagues may wish to have? I see none.

So with that, we will call the question. Councillor Helmer, there is a vote open with respect to the presentation. It’s the motion that Councillor Lehman moved. That’s correct.

I’m in favor. Thank you. Closing the vote, the motion’s passed. 13 to 0.

Thank you, colleagues. Your statement, thank you very much for your presentation time. And Mr. Wallace, I’m sure you’ll never complain about not getting five minutes ever again.

It certainly was very fulsome. And we appreciate your contributions, both of you. Thank you. So colleagues, this takes us to a new portion of the agenda, the final portion, which is the confidential agenda.

And in a moment, we’re going to look for a motion to move into confidential session. But first, I’m going to ask the clerk just to advise the public what the issue that we’re dealing with, please. Thank you through the chair. The matter is identified on the public agenda.

And it is a matter pertaining to the proposed acquisition or disposition of land by the municipality, including communications necessary for that purpose. Advice that is subject to solicitor client privilege. Commercial and financial information that belongs to the municipality and has monetary value or potential monetary value and a position, plan, procedure, criteria, or instruction to be applied to any negotiations carried out or to be carried out by or on behalf of the municipality. Thanks very much.

Then we’ll close it off as we return to public session after this. So with that, I’ll look for a motion moving to closed session. I see Councilor Close, the seconder by Councilor Hopkins. We’ll call the question.

Mayor Moulder, I’m in favor. Closing the vote, the motion’s passed, 13 to 0. And call for forbearance for just a few moments as we do what we need to do. Screen’s on just to confirm quorum, please.

And confirm quorum. Thank you very much. I’ll call on Councilor Lehman, please. Thank you, Your Worship.

I’d like to report on the confidential session that progress was made in the matter for which we went into. Thanks very much, colleagues, before we adjourned. You know, it’s been an interesting last couple of days. Yesterday, for example, Indigenous Solidarity Day.

Today, the age-friendly city that Councilor Hopkins and I recall so well. Today, we heard from HDC at LMCH. But, you know, that’s just in the last couple of days. In the last two weeks, notwithstanding our advent to summer, this has been an incredibly busy staff.

And what was interesting in all of those items I’ve just referenced is the significant commitment that staff make. And again, I know I speak for Council when I say how much we appreciate it very much. As I do all of you, and I wish everyone a great summer, for those of you who are taking holidays, good for you, for those who are not, that’s bad planning. So with all of that, let me wish everyone well.

And with that, I’ll look for motion to adjourn. Councilor Turner, second by Councilor Fife Miller. Let’s do that show of hands, the old-fashioned way, those in favor. Motion’s carried.

Thank you, colleagues, staff meeting adjourned.