During a public meeting under the Planning Act, Peterborough City Council voted to recommend for approval rezoning bylaws for a new cohousing project at 736 Maryland Avenue and deny a draft plan to convert 128 apartment units at 700 Parkhill Road West into condominiums.

The first item on the Planning Act agenda concerned the draft plan of SIREG 700 Parkhill Inc., the owner of a 128-unit apartment complex on the site, to convert the building into a condominium complex. A staff report included a recommendation for council to deny SIREG’s plan on the basis that the Parkhill site is currently host to a significant number of affordable housing units and condo prices included in the plan would not meet the threshold for affordable housing.

What this means is that council’s acceptance of the SIREG plan would have led to the long-term elimination of 17% of its purpose-built 3-bedroom rental housing supply.

While staff recommended turning down the plan, City planner Ian Walker noted they would also be open to a deferral until the owner could provide a plan to maintain the affordability of the building.

Residents of 700 Parkhill West delegated to council about SIREG’s history as a landlord, beginning with resident Paul Curtis.

“How are we supposed to trust a landlord that can't fix a toilet flushing incident for over a year?” He asked.

“Their expectation is that if this goes forward, they're going to be able to use new money to try and help these existing problems that they purchased [the building] knowing [about]…I'm grateful for the recommendation,” Curtis told council. “As much as I would love to become an owner of a piece of property, I do not want to become an owner of a piece of property that is not worth the land it’s on.”

The next delegate, 700 Parkhill resident Jen Lacy, presented the results of a survey she conducted among her fellow residents to city council.

“There were 47 respondents to my survey, and this survey is anecdotal evidence only,” she noted at the start of her delegation, before listing the survey results.

“66% of tenants have lived at Parkhill place for over five years,” she began. “66% of tenant surveys reported that [the reason they continue to live at 700 Parkhill] was because the rent is affordable.”

“72% were clear that no, they would not be eligible” for the mortgage necessary to purchase a condo if SIREG’s plan went through, Lacy found.

In concluding her presentation, Lacy stated her concerns about the condo conversion plan.

“I am worried about the impact this will have on current and future tenants. It's an investor driven model, so buyers are searchable, that the existing tenants will pay their mortgage, and this will encourage absentee ownership…If maintenance is currently being deferred while it is a rental property, the cost could be transferred to the condo owners. Converting a poorly maintained building transfers the financial risk to the new owners,” she explained.

For another resident, Sam Drebit, renovictions (evictions under the guise of renovating one’s property) were another possibility under SIREG’s plan.

“We can't be evicted for the purchaser's personal needs, but we could potentially be renovicted, because I don't see a way that, from what I know of a lot of the things that are going to be required in these units to make them saleable and shareable for another person, how they would be able to live in those units while they were being renovated,” she explained. 

Resident Matt Jarvis also attested to the state of disrepair at 700 Parkhill.

“All of the companies that have owned these units have been terrible landlords. We will skip routine maintenance on some items for years, structurally important renovations, like cleaning eaves troughs, repairing retaining walls… Our stairs are currently rotted out four-by-fours,” he told the horseshoe.

“The end result is typical of what we've seen over the last few years of speculative real estate investment, a bad job accomplished by someone who isn't paid enough or doesn't have…the skills necessary to do a good job.”

Jarvis brought a certain realism to the conversation on SIREG’s condo conversion plan.

“I just want to argue that it's going to be impossible for a good faith actor to appear to save these units,” he said. “If this [conversion] happens, if I have to leave for whatever reason, I'm going to be okay. I'm not gonna be happy about it.”

“It goes against my plans, [and will] affect my future staying in Peterborough, which is already precarious for those of us who missed our window to purchase in the city, but there will be no more of me,” Jarvis continued. “Every time some decision like this gets made, there's no more of me. Maybe some people think that's good.”

“These places will never be nice,” Jarvis said. “But they could be fine. And that's what we need. We need more housing units that are fine.”

Asked what scared him most about this plan by Town Ward Councillor Joy Lachica, Jarvis said he wasn’t scared, but noted converting this building might invite a bleak future for younger residents of the city, particularly students at Trent University.

“I think my biggest fear is what I said before, that if we take 3-bedroom rentals off-market, and maybe the tenants now are protected, then the next people are coming in. You've got a liberal arts university in town. These aren't all trained doctors and lawyers here. People are working in social services and culture; where are they going to live? They have to live somewhere, right?” He asked.

The last delegate on this item was Todd C. Slater of The $imple Company, speaking on behalf of SIREG 700 Parkhill Inc.

“Let me just explain a couple of things to everybody, because I think there seems to be a lot of misinformation that gets put out,” Slater began.

“Every tenant will have grandfathered tenancy. We can never evict tenants. Also based on the Province of Ontario, the only increase that we can put in is our standard increased rents, which would be 2.5% this year. We have never done above-guideline increases since we started. We've never done a special assessment. Tenants are not responsible for property taxes. They're not responsible for condominium fees. And the people who are truly good real estate investors are actually just people just like you,” he told attendees.

“When you create a condominium, the actual repairs do increase because there is a combined share,” Slater claimed.

Ashburnham Ward Councillor Keith Riel pushed back on Slater’s claims.

“You stated that you’re trying to shift the burden of the repairs onto the condo owners,” he began.

“No, that’s not what I said,” Slater replied.

“But that’s what you’re doing,” said Riel.

“What you're saying is I’m shifting responsibility,” Slater told Riel. “No. What we're doing is we're sharing the responsibility for expenses.”

This prompted laughter from the gallery.

In the ensuing council discussion, Monaghan Ward Councillor Matt Crowley stated his support for the motion.

“Until many improvements are made and their concerns are taken seriously. I cannot support anything that risks further instability for this community,” he told his fellow councillors.

Councillors expressed overwhelming support for the motion on the floor, with wardmates Lachica and Bierk thanking the residents who made their voices heard about this project and the City staff who prepared the report.

This took council to a vote, where they unanimously recommended for approval the staff report to deny SIREG’s plans to convert 700 Parkhill Road West into a condominium building.

The next item under the Planning Act concerned the rezoning of 736 Maryland Avenue for the purposes of building a new six-story residential building. The site’s owners seek to include 42 affordable residential apartments and enlarged amenity space, following the model of cohousing.

Tom Calwell, secretary of the board of Kawartha Commons Cohousing, the owner of the site, presented the project’s goals to council.

“We are a group of individuals who want to live in this building,” said Calwell.

“We are paying for all of the development to be able to live in this building that we're working on. Part of our name is Cohousing. Cohousing is a way of living where we purposely design a building to increase social interaction amongst the people. It's big in Europe, it's starting to come into North America. It is very beneficial,” Calwell told council. 

“For seniors, what they're saying is you get about eight years longer being able to stay at home before you have to go into a seniors’ residence. For multi-generational families, this social interaction provides support, babysitters, whatever.”

Calwell was generally in support of the motion on the floor, but asked for council to omit one detail: the ‘H’ holding sign which staff recommended be affixed to the plan to signify that there remained some work to be done on filtering out groundwater onsite.

“Our goal is to have an affordable building, an accessible building and an energy-efficient building,” he said. “My ask for council…is that we don't think we need the hold for de-watering on this rezoning…Yes, we will completely de-water, but we would like that to be covered under the site plan.”

“The reason for us is that we are looking for funding for this. Without getting some funding, we can't make affordable units in the building, and we want to have an affordable component. Funding is very competitive, and the H [sign] might not affect our funding, but it may, if we're in a close race with someone else,” Calwell explained.

Laura Stone of One Community Planning, the planning agent hired by Kawartha Commons for this project, expressed a similar sentiment.

“I would respectfully ask…the committee members to consider rezoning this property without the hold. It is mandated at site plan states that all engineering is required to meet the criteria of the city's engineering department prior to state plan approval being deemed complete,” she explained.

“Currently, our development engineers are working with the city staff to make sure that we can meet that net zero. We cannot move forward without doing that anyways.”

Answering a question from Ashburnham Ward Councillor Gary Baldwin, Stone indicated that construction on this project would begin “as soon as possible,” pending approval of the rezoning bylaw.

Councillor Bierk also asked Stone about different funding model options for the project, to which she deferred her answer to Calwell.

“So far, we've gone through three designs as different programs appear. Right now, we have ten different financing options that we're looking at,” answered Calwell. “Two of them still do allow us affordable units…if we can't get a grant component, we can't manage to be affordable.”

During the public meeting’s discussion portion, Bierk expressed his support for the program.

“The way that this model is described to me, it would sort of free up some of the bottlenecking that is happening in our housing stock…It will put less of a burden on the situations of care for the elderly that are very costly. And by having this option in our community, it will allow people to graduate from situations in which they may be over housed,” he told council.

As requested by the delegates, Bierk moved an amendment to the main motion to remove the holding ‘H’ symbol from the 736 Maryland rezoning bylaw, which carried 8-2, with Councillors Baldwin and Parnell opposed (for a total of ten votes: all councillors but Otonabee Ward’s Kevin Duguay, who had declared a conflict of pecuniary interest on this item).

Council then moved on to the main motion, which was approved unanimously. With that, council recommended for approval the rezoning of 736 Maryland Avenue for residential purposes, which, pending ratification, would mean a green light for the Kawartha Commons Cohousing project.

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