Six social housing units in Regina complete through joint-government initiative

WATCH: Six upgraded social housing units in Regina have been completed thanks to a joint-government initiative. Sierra D’Souza Butts has the details.

Affordable housing options in the Queen City are seeing a boost as renovations on six rowhouse units at Regency Gardens have now reached completion – finishing phase three of a 115-unit project.

A joint-venture between the province and federal government, a $3.35 million investment was made to rebuild and design six units to accommodate larger family households.

“What we are attempting to do, especially in Regina, is realign what the needs are with what we have for inventory [to] renovate and renew existing housing stock to reflect those needs,” Social Services Minister Terry Jenson said following a ribbon cutting event Thursday morning.

The funding was provided through Canada’s National Housing Strategy Community Housing Initiative (CCHI), which aims to tackle social housing needs in communities across the country.

The project is part of the federal and Saskatchewan government’s bilateral agreement of investing $585 million over 10 years – starting in 2019 – into multi-year repair and renovation projects at matched costs.

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“It’s nice to see some big families get some homes instead of just sitting on the waitlist,” shared Shelly Christian, general manager of the Regina Housing Authority.

Christian said the support from Ottawa and the province helped fill the financial gap required to move forward with the projects.

“Just getting six big families off of our waitlist, because we didn’t have any six bedroom units available prior to building these six of them,” she explained.

“Four bedrooms were our larger units. It’s nice to see some big families get some homes instead of just sitting on the waitlist.”

With Saskatchewan operating over 17,000 social housing across the province, the ministry said $9.2 million in new funding will go towards restoring 285 homes.

“A couple of the major projects that we have underway in the three cities right now ... [is] the Bryant Place project in Prince Albert, Westview Place project in Saskatoon and Prairie Place here in Regina … [for] seniors. That’s been identified as a need in the community," Jensen said.

As of March, the federal government has committed $65.84 billion in creating 166,000 housing units and repairing over 322,000 units to support projects across Canada.