A major affordable housing development in Waterloo is one step closer to becoming a reality.
On Thursday, the City of Waterloo announced it had finalized the transfer of city-owned land at 2025 University Avenue East, which will be home to one of the largest and most ambitious affordable housing projects in Canada.
“This is a once-in-a-generation, transformational project to help address the housing crisis in Waterloo,” Dorothy McCabe, Waterloo’s Mayor, said in a release.
The site will include a mix of residential and mixed-use buildings with more than 1,000 affordable, attainable, and sustainable housing units.
It will be constructed by Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region/BUILD NOW, which has been tasked with creating a vibrant urban village that features an interconnected network of parks, plazas, commercial spaces, and community gardens.
The housing units will be available for ownership and rentals, and the latter would be overseen by non-profit and co-operative housing organizations.
“What makes this transformational is not just the size, but the mix of what we are going to build,” Philip Mills, Habitat Waterloo Region/BUILD NOW CEO, said in a release. “It’s ownership housing, and it’s family-sized units. With a 70 per cent ownership to 30 per cent rental split and a committed focus on three and four-bedroom units, we are prioritizing what the community needs to continue to grow and thrive.”
The project is receiving funding from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund and the endeavour will be studied and documented by the University of Waterloo’s Future Cities Institute, with a goal of creating a transformational model for affordable housing in Canada.
Construction is set to begin early next year and some of the units will be move-in ready in early-to-mid 2027.