Windsor picks west-side property for permanent housing hub

A west-side property has been selected as the home for Windsor's permanent homelessness housing hub.

The site is 2.8 hectares at 700 Wellington Avenue, just south of Wyandotte Street West.

The city's commissioner of human and health services calls it a "giant step forward" for the community.

"[It] provides enough space to develop at least 64 one-bedroom permanent supportive housing units, as well as common space for programming, services, and other amenities," said Andrew Daher in a statement.

City staff say roughly 200 properties were explored — and that administration initially attempted to buy the land but was unsuccessful — and will now use expropriation to move things forward.

Daher said expropriation could take four to eight months, and that he expects it will be a minimum of three years to get the site up and running. 

"I can tell you that my phone has already started ringing off the hook because many partners are calling and saying 'how do we collocate, whether it's some of the services or all of the services," he told CBC News.

According to Daher, the hub will not end up turning into an emergency overnight shelter, saying there are already options for that in the city.

"A hub of supportive permanent housing — that's our focus. That's a solution to end homelessness."

It's expected the project will run around $50 million, pre-inflation, so you can expect an even bigger price tag when all is said and done.

The value of the land was last assessed in 2023 at $490,000, according to the city's online property tool.

The site is within a two-kilometre radius of the downtown core and on a major transit corridor.

In a release by the city, it also states the land is large enough to accommodate potential affordable housing units and additional social services support.

Windsor's temporary homelessness hub has been operating out of the former Windsor Water World building on Wyandotte Street East for the past few years.

Councillor against the location

Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante says he voted against the site's location because it's "largely inconsistent" with a report that council unanimously endorsed two years ago.

That report, he says, suggested a location in the core closer to other services for the community's most vulnerable.

Costante says the process of expropriation can also be expensive.

"My view was we didn't need to go through this extensive process that not only includes expropriation — but remediating land, which we don't know to what extent — that would be required when there was other land available," he said.

According to Costante, the money the city would have presumably been spending on expropriation and remediation could have been spent on "actual housing," or on other and "cheaper" properties. 

He says there were several other locations council was presented with — including ones owned by the city — that were eventually passed over.

"That hub should be more centrally located, nd the spokes of that hub — other shelters, other service providers — will feed into that. But it should be located in a more central fashion." 

Ward 1 Coun. Fred Francis says he agrees and was also opposed to the site. 

"I thought there was a number of other options that we could have moved forward with at a less costly scenario," Francis told CBC News. "Some of the chosen locations were owned by the city, so I wanted to move forward and looking at those first. I thought that would be more pragmatic, more practical and more cost effective."

A 'difficult' yet 'important' decision

While the site's location is out of downtown Windsor, it still ends up being on the westerly edge of Ward 3.

Coun. Renaldo Agostino says it was a "difficult" decision to make — but ultimately an "important" one, too.

"This wasn't a hands in the air, 'let's go,' [decision]," he said.

"There was no party, there was no celebration, there were no smiles. I credit every councillor … we had to fight hard, we had to make some real tough calls and this was the best we could've possibly made."

Agostino says he trusts the experts council followed, who suggested any new site should be within a two-kilometre radius from the downtown core.

He also had a message to neighbours of the Wellington Avenue address — saying the city will be there to support them "every step of the way."

"Ninety per cent of the issues you see from these services that exist are there because we stuffed them into places that they don't fit. 

"We're trying to play soccer on ice. When we build from scratch … we're going to build it in a way that supports what needs to be done."