City needs to prioritize more affordable housing: advocacy group

By Anil Jhalli

Housing advocates are calling on city council to invest and prioritize building more affordable housing in Ottawa.  

“This is not a niche issue anymore for people. This is not only for folks who only had pretty rough experiences that got them into homelessness,” said Kaite Burkholder Harris, the executive director of Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa. “This is increasingly a story of two working people, in a household, who can not afford the skyrocketing price of rent. And it''s because we have a rental market and a housing market that's dominated by investors.” 

She told The Sam Laprade Show on Feb. 16 that the 15 million dollars earmarked for housing in the 2023 budget isn't enough. 

“Rent in Ottawa, it's $2,000 for a one bedroom apartment and it's unaffordable right now,” she said. “There are two ends of the spectrum. The money we are asking from council is more non-profit housing and we also know that we need, in the private market, units that people can afford so that looks more like regulation and allows people to live in a more stable way.”

Listen to the full interview with Kaite Burkholder Harris below:

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