Tecumseh Council is setting up a committee that will help advise the town on how to implement and use money from the federal government's Housing Accelerator Fund.
The Housing Advisory Panel will include homebuilders, developers, realtors, housing corporation officials, community services, and the United Way.
The group will advise council and town staff on housing initiatives.
In March 2024, the town was awarded $4.4 million from the federal government's fund to expedite the construction of 137 housing units over the next three years, part of a larger goal to construct 5,800 housing units over the next decade.
Ward 1 Councillor Alicia Higgison, who will serve on the committee, says they're going to be looking at all of the initiatives under the town's Housing Accelerator Fund commitments to make sure they're putting the best solutions forward.
"So that we're really doing something that can hit the ground running and actually make a big difference in the housing stock in Tecumseh and affordability," she says. "We're going to be meeting quarterly to figure out if the solutions we're offering will be used in practice and how we can actually put these best practices forward."
Higgison says some of the information this panel comes up with will inform some of the decision-making by council.
"That we can make these things, these initiatives really appear in the community so that people see them as visible, and hopefully we can use the brilliance of this panel then to kind of pull together and really make an impact with the $4 million of that HAF funding," she says.
Higgison says they want real solutions that will impact people.
"If we're going to be spending this money, we actually realize we're in a housing crisis, that housing is a real issue, and that Tecumseh is growing. When we have this investment, what can we do? That it's not just saying, "Oh, good for us," but it's good for the community," she says.
Tecumseh has committed to nine initiatives as part of the funding, which include reducing development fees, reviewing zoning by-laws, and fast-tracking permit applications for medium-density, duplex, and multi-family homes such as townhouses and multiplexes.
Tecumseh's application also allows for fourplexes as-of-right anywhere in the town.