Ward 3 councillor wants to make sure Windsor residents on priority two housing list don’t lose their spot

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A member of city council wants to make sure people from Windsor in need of community housing are not losing their spot on the waitlist to people from outside the region.

Ward 3 Coun. Renaldo Agostino has asked city administration to report back to council on what the communities around us are doing when it comes to ensuring their residents aren’t bumped down on the waitlist for housing by people from outside their given communities.

Agostino also wants to know what current measures are in place to protect residents who end up on the priority two housing list for community housing.

He’s noticed that other communities are instituting waitlists with restrictions.

“For example, you have to prove that you’ve been in the community, London, or Ottawa. Certain communities are saying that if you want to get on our housing list, you have to show you’ve been in that particular city for six consecutive months in a row at a minimum,” he said.

Priority two (P2) housing status in Windsor-Essex is a high-ranking position on the Central Housing Registry waitlist and is designed for people who are homeless, at risk of homelessness, or in unsafe housing.

Applicants must be approved by the CHR based on specific criteria-such as fleeing danger, impending eviction, or having children separated due to lack of housing, and must be eligible for rent-geared-to-income assistance.

According to the Windsor-Essex Community Housing Corporation, there were 755 people on the wait list as of April 2.

Agostino says he wants to protect residents on the priority two housing list and community housing assets, so the city is not taking people from other jurisdictions.

“That’s why I want this information back to say, ‘Hey, yeah. There are all these communities around us; if they’re instituting wait times and you have to show proof that you’ve been in this certain community for a certain amount of time, I’ll just go to Windsor because Windsor doesn’t have that.’ If someone else has that and we don’t, I want ours to be twice as long as theirs,” he said.

Agostino says if this was a perfect world, he’d write a check to help everyone, but that’s not the reality we’re facing.

“The reality of the situation is that we have to protect what we have here. We have to protect our residents and our people who have been waiting on that list for a really long time. I hate to see other people come from other areas and get priority because they’re suffering from homelessness,” he said.

The report, which will come back to a future meeting of council, is also going to examine the age requirement for senior residents within community housing and revert it back to the 65-age range minimum as opposed to the current 55.

Ward 8 Coun. Gary Kaschak says he’s received complaints about issues around the age disparity between 55-year-olds compared to much older residents and where they are in life.