Town of Huntsville Agrees to Review Florence St. Micro-Community Initiative Proposal

Suzanne Martineau and Ben Jardine made a delegation to the Town of Huntsville on October 25th to present the draft Florence Street Micro-Community business plan and formally request a seven acre parcel of land be donated to the Muskoka Community Land Trust for the purpose of building permanently attainable housing.

The draft plan for the site includes a mix of townhomes and bungalows intended for affordable rent-to-own and home ownership, multi-unit residential buildings intended for affordable rentals, and two six-plexes intended as a housing cooperative.

The Florence Street Community Initiative is designed to promote inclusion, diversity and self-reliance through housing security. The town is growing, and this initiative is designed to meet the socio-economic needs of our community by creating healthy, diverse, and sustainable neighbourhoods.

The affordability model supports a socio-economic population that is directly related to income earners that comprise part of the 46% of Muskoka’s local labour force segments in tourism, services, hospitality and trades. Our target markets include, but are not limited to, first time home buyers, seniors looking to downsize, newcomers, and workers who need housing. In this way, the initiative is designed in direct response to the housing and labor needs in our region.

This affordability model is also designed to support a demographic such as seniors on a fixed income who may be seeking to downsize within the local market, thus freeing up much-needed housing inventory on the open market. Importantly, the initiative is designed to protect affordability for future generations of residents as well. With multiple affordability mechanisms at play, this initiative will serve the long-term socio-economic growth and stability of Huntsville.

Altogether, this initiative could create 161 homes for up to 370 individuals and families in the Huntsville community, reduce the number of people experiencing core housing need, and start to close the affordable rental and homeownership gap in our local housing continuum.

Councillors made very encouraging statements in support of the initiative, and voted unanimously to direct staff to review and report back on potential development options and the process for the transfer of land for this attainable housing initiative.

You can watch the presentation and questions from council on the public feed of the meeting on the Town of Huntsville’s website:

General Committee Meeting - October 25, 2023 (presentation starts at 0:45:00)

General Committee Meeting Part 2 - October 25, 2023 (vote starts at 0:44:00)

We are thrilled to work closely with community groups, the Town of Huntsville, and the District of Muskoka on the next stages of this initiative to balance the needs of the environment and the community, to create housing opportunities for a diverse, equitable, and inclusive range of people in core housing need, and ultimately to make a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of Huntsville as a whole.

For more details, updates on the project to date, and to ask questions, please register for our next MCLT 101 Webinar or subscribe to our newsletter.