New Saskatoon affordable housing will help people with spinal cord injuries

Housing to help people with spinal cord injuries WATCH: New Saskatoon housing will help people living with spinal cord injuries.

A collaboration between the province, the City of Saskatoon and an Alberta-based developer is helping provide affordable and barrier-free housing.

Ten new units unveiled in the Rosewood neighbourhood Thursday will provide affordable housing for four low-income families and six families needing barrier-free housing.

"We know that safe and affordable housing contributes to the health and well-being of people in our province," MLA and provincial secretary Don Morgan said.

"Housing needs are changing rapidly. To meet those changing needs, the Government of Saskatchewan is addressing barriers to social housing to make sure the right house is available in the right place."

Support services and tenant placement will be provided by Spinal Cord Injury Saskatchewan (SCIS), which was instrumental in consulting with Newrock Developments to ensure four of the units were as barrier-free as possible for tenants suffering from physical disabilities.

Launel Scott, the president of SCIS, was honoured to see hours of consultation come together Thursday.

"Barrier-free really means a design that is accessible by all people," Scott said.

"In a barrier-free environment, there's all sorts of things to consider."

For tradespeople building new homes, there are plenty of regulations and codes which dictate how a home is built. When a home is intended to be "universally designed," as Scott said rather than barrier-free, predictable decisions like where a grab bar or light switch goes become heavily scrutinized.

"We have seen accessibility where measurements have been met, but the practical layout doesn't work. It is pretty intricate," Scott said. "It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle."

SCIS is a non-profit organization that aims to assist people with spinal cord injuries and other physical disabilities.

City councillor Bev Dubois was pleased to see affordable housing options open in her area. As the city continues to develop its new housing strategy, she said Thursday's unveiling is a testatment to the hard work of council and administration to increase innovative and attainable housing over the past decade.

"Affordable housing in Saskatoon is something that we are all working for every single day," Dubois said. "It's something that we need to work on and be cognizant of."

The construction of 10 of the 96 units at Sage Meadows Townhomes was made possible by $250,000 in funding from the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation through the Saskatchewan Co-Investment Program. Through a cost-matching grant, the City of Saskatoon provided $250,000 and Newrock Developments provided $85,250.

Newrock's manager of operations Derrick Muth said when it comes to greenlighting projects of this nature, few communities in the Prairies do it better than Saskatoon.

"The City of Saskatoon has been absolutely instrumental throughout the years since we started building homes here," he said.

"We find that the City of Saskatoon is very much more advanced than a lot of them are with the programs they have in place and their willingness to work with builders."

Muth said the city has emphasized both the rental market and homeownership to help build capacity quicker than other cities are able to. Without the city's Innovative Housing Incentives, he doubts the project would have materialized.

"There's a reason Saskatchewan is one of the most affordable places to live. I give full credit to the city and programs like that because it really does help allow builders to provide these programs and keep housing affordable for everybody," Muth said.