City-Owned Vacant Land
The City's Affordable Housing Strategy, outlines a commitment to identify city-owned vacant land for potential redevelopment as affordable housing.
The process for doing this is quite lengthy. It involves identifying parcels of land that may be City-owned then circulating this list to various City departments including Legal, Public Works, and Planning, Engineering and Regulatory Services for comments about the parcel's potential for redevelopment as affordable housing. Next, subject to Council approval, title searches on the parcels of land are completed. If the title search indicates that the land is in fact City-owned and Council approves, the land is then expropriated to eliminate any potential claim prior to the commencement of projects on these sites.
Four parcels of land have been expropriated and identified for potential redevelopment as affordable housing to date. These include: 245 Forest Road, 80-90 Empire Avenue, 375 Waterford Bridge Road, and 28 Eric Street. A project is already planned for 28 Eric Street. There are no planned projects for the other three sites at this time. We would like to engage with residents, businesses, and other stakeholders about these parcels of land.