Former Catholic school in Saint John could be turned into 30 affordable housing units

Develop Saint John and an affordable housing organization have new plans for the beleaguered building that once housed St. Vincent's High School.

Development plans for the historic Waterloo Village building fell through two years ago, and the former Catholic girls' school has been standing empty for about 18 years.

Now, after the Saint John Diocese made a gift of the building and the land, Housing Alternatives Inc. is applying for funding from the federal government to develop the school into 30 affordable housing units.

Kit Hickey, CEO of Housing Alternatives Inc., said the project would be split into two phases. The first would include 30 units built using the federal money, and the second would include building 30 more units in the newer part of the structure later in 2021.

She said if the funding request is approved and everything goes as planned, the units would be ready for rent in April 2022. 

"We are eligible for 100 per cent of the cost to do the retrofit to the building, but whether we receive 100 per cent or not remains to be seen," she said. "Whether we're approved or not remains to be to be seen as well."

Council voted Monday to write a letter of support for Housing Alternatives's bid for funding from the $1 billion federal Rapid Housing Initiative.

The project has already gotten a conditional commitment from the province for 30 rent supplements and a $50,000 grant from the Community Housing Transformation Centre to assess the building's condition and help with the federal funding application.

Hickey said rent for the 30 units will be calculated as 30 per cent of the tenants' total income. The 30 other units in the newer part of the building will be leased at 80 per cent of market rent prices. 

She said these units will be reserved for people who are homeless, women and children and single adults at risk of being homeless. She said the city has about 70 people who are absolutely homeless.

"That does not take into consideration those that are living in substandard housing," she said. "Accommodations or those that are couch surfing, or those that are living in abusive relationships because of nowhere else to go."

The school was built in 1902 and graduated its last class in 2002. Since the building has been empty for so long, Hickey said if the funding is approved the plan is to strip the inside and retrofit it.

In its report to council, Develop Saint John said there's room for one project to be funded through this the program in Saint John, and it has found no other projects in the city requesting this funding.

The project team is "cautiously optimistic" after getting early results from architectural and structural engineering assessments, the report said.

The application must be submitted on Dec. 31, the report said, and construction must be completed within a year. Because of these constraints, the St. Vincent project appears to be ideal for the funding because of efforts already made to develop it.

"This project has land already assembled, has already been appropriately zoned and has had the architectural design advanced to roughly 75 per cent completion," the report said.

Multiple false starts

Kevin McDonald has been involved in trying to develop the building for about five years. He chairs the non-profit St. Vincent's Apartments Inc., which raised about $9 million but failed to meet the mark.

"We were always $3 million short," he said. "We tried and we worked with on the various levels of government and social development, and it just proved that at the time it wasn't possible."

That $9 million was then funnelled to a neighbouring property that also includes affordable housing units.

At Monday night's meeting, Coun. John MacKenzie said if this project gets funding, that area of the city would be improved.

"That whole street is going to be reformed, it's going to be beautiful, it's going to have a lot of affordable housing on it."

McDonald said said he hopes this project comes to fruition because "housing is desperately, desperately, desperately needed," in Saint John.

"We've got to do so much more," he said.