Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
The Saskatchewan Housing Corp. (SHC) will be analyzing proposals in the coming months to award loans to sponsors wanting to build affordable rental housing.
The Rental Development Program (RDP) provides forgivable loans to sponsors as owners and developers that want to build affordable rental housing, and provide supports to low-income Saskatchewan citizens in communities where the need has been demonstrated.
According to SHC, a loan is forgiven over a period of up to 20 years depending on the size of the loan. The corporation uses a Request for Proposals (RFP) process to allow sponsors to apply for a forgivable loan under the RDP.
The housing corporation has just finished accepting proposals from sponsors as part of the fall 2017 RFP process. The applications are evaluated based on specific set of criteria. The deadline for proposals was Jan. 31 and a program official says the corporation hopes to award loans in May.
“We’d be probably looking at sometime in May by the time we start awarding projects,” said Tim Gross, the executive director of housing development at SHC, recognizing that it takes a long time to assess and prioritize the projects.
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Information included with the application includes a list of eligibility criteria for sponsors and projects. A project is eligible if it involves new construction of affordable housing units, the acquisition of existing rental units or the conversion of non-residential buildings.
The projects must have a minimum of four rental units or rooms if it is a rooming house, and the housing cannot be secondary suites, building camps, group homes, nursing homes, special care homes or life lease units.
Gross said the RDP has been around for a long time, and the joint program receives funding from both the federal and provincial governments.
He said depending on the amount of federal and provincial funding that is made available, the SHC tries to issue a call for proposals once a year under the program.
The corporation enters into an agreement with successful sponsors whether they be developers or owners. Gross said the corporation provides sponsors with a sum of money and in return, the loan is forgiven over a period of time as long as obligations are met.
He noted that the main obligation is to develop affordable rental housing and rent it out to low income persons, and even to a specific group of low income persons within a particular community where the need was identified.
If the sponsors meet all of their obligations, he said the housing loan is fully forgiven. The corporation aims to work with various groups in the process and it could include co-ops, non-profit groups, municipalities and First Nations band councils, according to the executive director.
The idea is for those groups to bring some of their resources to the table in order to work together with SHC to develop the affordable rental housing for low income persons, he said. The program is open to all communities depending on their needs.
“We advertise across the province,” he said, noting that the needs of communities gets assessed. “Given we have a limited amount of money, we look at what communities have the greatest need and require this type of housing.”
Gross said the RDP is quite flexible in terms of the options to sponsors and their projects. A sponsor could take an old commercial building and renovate it into a housing complex, and it could qualify for a loan under the program, he explained.
It was recognized that one of the evaluation criteria is an apprenticeship component, so the use of apprentices to help build or renovate housing could help a project to be chosen. The units are often managed by non-profit housing groups and not SHC, Gross added.
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