The local United Way has become a non-profit housing provider.
Bill Atwood from the Stratford Beacon Herald, March 06
Distilled to its essence, Ryan Erb’s vision for a prosperous Stratford hinges on improvements to two key “areas of need.”
The first, says the United Way Perth-Huron executive director, is making sure that every working resident earns a living wage. The second – and the area that has become the more pressing need – is ensuring everyone has safe, affordable and culturally appropriate housing.
“I would venture a guess that more than half of the social issues we’re facing today are as a result of income and housing,” Erb said. “If we were to solve those problems for people, we would have far less need for social services.”
With the City of Stratford in the midst of developing a new official plan, Erb is encouraging the local planning department to consider the critical importance of affordable housing when finalizing the document.
“We need more housing in general, but we actually need, in particular, non-market housing,” he said, “and we need to make sure that official plans support the creation of non-market housing.”
But rather than simply shining a light on these problems, the local United Way has taken a truly novel approach by launching its own “sub-organization” dedicated to tackling the issue of affordable housing. Founded in late 2023, United Housing has embraced a mission of ensuring that everyone in the Stratford region “lives in housing suitable and affordable to their needs.” To accomplish this lofty goal, the agency has become a non-profit housing provider that offers two-thirds of its rentals below the market rate, United Housing director Kathy Vassilakos said.
“We fit into that niche of providing mixed-income rental housing and trying get housing across the area,” said Vassilakos, who began her role in January 2024.
While the lack of affordable housing is not unique to the Stratford area, the United Way’s involvement is. Driven by data from its own social research and planning council, as well as community committees from across Perth and Huron Counties, United Housing was, in a way, years in the making.
“United Way procurement did not go into this quickly or lightly. There was a feasibility study done on what is needed and what could come here. There was a business plan around the idea of creating a not-for-profit housing corporation, and we’ve spent the last year and a half developing projects and creating partnerships and collaborations that could make these projects go,” Vassilakos said.
“What is needed was determined, how we can meet that need was looked at, and now we’re at that sort of execution phase of what’s needed. It was a careful, deliberative process that got us here.”
Less than a year after its launch, United Housing purchased its first property. This building at 190 Main St. W. in Listowel will eventually become 10 units of deeply affordable and market housing. The 418-square-metre space, once complete, will cost roughly $2.5 million, which includes the purchase price and the renovations.
The agency is also looking at building another 40 units at its North Perth Library property, which will also serve as a new library access centre. They are also working on properties in Huron County and Stratford, but formal announcements aren’t quite ready to be made yet.
“We want to be able to say this is what’s happening, how we’re going to do it and what it’s going to look like, right? We don’t want to get people either excited or upset too early,” Vassilakos said.
Only a handful of United Way chapters across the country have adopted similar models. It’s not that the concept wouldn’t work elsewhere, but each United Way chapter looks at how to best serve their own communities, Vassilakos noted
“United Ways make an impact in their communities whenever they take on a challenge. In this particular case, there are a number of United Ways across the country that have decided that housing is where they can make an impact. Every United Way isn’t going to be able to tackle every single challenge comprehensively. . . . Housing and homelessness happen to be the areas that United Way Perth Huron has decided to focus on.”
As of 2021, there were 970 households in Stratford that had core housing needs, meaning these families were in housing that was too small, too run-down or too expensive – and they couldn’t afford alternatives.
While the United Housing approach has already shown promise, tackling the housing crisis will take time – and more collaborations, Vassilakos said.
“It took us 30 years and lots of different decisions to get here. I think the only way we get out of the housing crisis is an all-hands-on-deck (approach). All levels of government, not-for-profits and co-ops, and individuals in the community working together to get out of it. It isn’t one size fits all; it’s everyone all the time,” she said.
For Erb, Stratford’s role as a “progressive community” will require some future decisions that could be, in the short term, unpopular. To protect adjacent farmland from urban sprawl, for example, Erb emphasized the need for increased housing density through developments like the Grand Trunk Renewal Project and the Krug factory redevelopment.
“There may be people in the community that don’t want that, but we’ll need council to stand for those kinds of principles in order to move forward as a community,” Erb said.
“And I think if we do that, we can win.”
