St. Stephen has been denied funding under the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund for a second time.
The municipality had applied for around $5 million for several projects, council heard during Wednesday’s committee of the whole meeting.
However, the municipality learned last week that its application to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was not approved.
Mayor Allan MacEachern said he is frustrated and disappointed by the decision, which he believes is political.
“I don’t think any one of us that stepped up, no, I’m sure, none of us that stepped up and had a chance to do it the second time, we just literally wasted our time,” said the mayor.
“When we develop in these rural areas, the end product, the assessment is lower than what would be in the cities, and to see them supporting this funding to the cities more than the rural areas, it just drives me crazy, because we need that little bit of an edge here.”
In a letter to municipal staff dated March 6, Malik Krey with CMHC said they received more than 200 applications and “were not able to support all applications with the funding available.”
Coun. David Hyslop said he is frustrated by the response the municipality received from CMHC.
“Just to say that 200 applications received and you weren’t one of the successful ones is not a very good excuse for me to go on, right?” he said.
“I mean, give us a little bit more of an inkling of our understanding of where we went wrong. If you say that nothing went wrong, that we just had to divvy it up, then who are the people that got it?”
Coun. Wade Greenlaw said he was also disappointed by the decision because he felt the municipality had a solid application.
“I know the effort that went into this housing accelerator two application, and it was done really, really well,” he added. “So, it had nothing to do with the application. I’ll leave it at that.”
Municipal CAO Jeff Renaud said St. Stephen had proposed a number of projects as part of its funding application.
That included building a tiny home community similar to the 12 Neighbours project that has been up and running in Fredericton for several years.
Renaud said they had also looked at servicing the town-owned property beside The Beacon.
“We continue to work through it with our colleagues at [New Brunswick’s Regional Development Corporation], finishing up the pre-construction work so that we can apply for the full construction money,” he said.
“It would have been nice to be able to stack those, obviously, but we’re going to continue to work towards that end goal.”
Renaud added that they do have developer interest in the site and are hopeful that they will receive construction money.
