THUNDER BAY — The city will use an additional allocation from the federal government's Housing Accelerator Fund to enhance its vacant and dilapidated buildings program.
Thunder Bay is one of 27 communities to be awarded supplementary funding for having achieved the first-year target for new housing units.
The $2 million top-up represents 10 per cent of the value of the original federal funding of about $20 million.
To be eligible, cities had to propose new initiatives to accelerate the creation of new housing units.
Summer Stevenson, the program's manager in Thunder Bay, said the city will use the money in a two-pronged approach – examining how it deals with run-down properties taken over for tax arrears, and considering how it might assist the private-sector owners of these kinds of properties.
In an interview Tuesday, she said the city would like to speed up the process of dealing with dilapidated buildings.
"Right now, it can be a pretty long timeline to take a look at problem buildings and either rehabilitate them so they're livable again, or demolish them if that's required."
The government funding could be used to support the demolition of a city-owned derelict property, she said, in order to prepare it for sale and redevelopment for housing.
Stevenson said the city will also study how it can help building owners who have existing housing units that are vacant and in need of renovation.
"We'll be looking at how we can incentivize those folks to help restore their buildings to bring them back online for residential use."
Those inducements could be monetary or they could be provided through policy.
The first step toward updating the vacant and dilapidated buildings program will see the city completing an inventory of properties that are either already city-owned or "on the city's radar," Stevenson said, before moving on to consider what can be done with the private sector.
"I think there's lots of opportunity here. The vacant and dilapidated buildings program was identified as a major action item in the city manager's work plan. Originally, before our proposal for funding, we were looking at creating a program by the end of 2026 or early 2027. What this funding will allow us to do is accelerate that timeline, and look at having a program in place within the year."
Stevenson said this will ultimately help the city revitalize the downtown areas and other parts of the city, and predicted there will be a lasting impact in the community well beyond the life of the funding.
