That sound you heard on Friday was the proverbial drop in the bucket.
We’re talking about the story that appears on page 8 of this week’s paper, “Flack flicks $440,000 to C-K.”
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack was in Chatham to hand municipal officials an oversized cheque for $440,000 to support housing construction.
The funds will go towards ongoing affordable housing projects, according to Mayor Darrin Canniff.
As well it should.
But let’s be real. The cash is a pittance. Not that any dollars from the province aren’t appreciated, but in housing terms, $440,000 basically covers the cost of the sale of one average home in C-K. Our story on home sales on page 11, “Home prices up, but sales slide,” will tell you the average price of homes sold through the first eight months of the year was $433,520.
So, one home.
This despite the municipality shattering housing targets. The bullseye sat on 92 new homes for 2024, when there were 311 new housing starts.
Compare that to Sarnia, which received $400,000 from the same program. The city of 72,000 did well, nearly doubling its target, breaking ground on 164 new homes last year.
So, C-K is bigger by population and essentially doubled what Sarnia did in new home starts last year, but only received $40,000 more.
Something in the funding formula is broken.
There was also something missing on Friday. Or someone, rather.
Doug Ford was on hand for similar grip-and-grin moments in London, Windsor and Sarnia, but his Chatham-Kent allergies apparently got the better of him yet again, as he left Flack on his own – well, with a team of handlers that outnumbered the reporters attending the announcement.
Our premier, basically ever since York1 announced its intentions to force a landfill site down our throats just outside Dresden, has been conspicuously absent.
Then again, Chatham-Kent has two MPPs and Steve Pinsonneault was also absent on Friday.
It’s Pinsonneault’s riding that is saddled with the York1 initiative, one for which Ford’s Bill 5 removed the need for an environmental assessment.
Oh, those allergies, Doug…
