City of London
P.O. Box 5035
267 Dundas Street
3rd Floor
London Ontario
N6A 4L9
Housing Division Overview
Historically, the City of London has assumed a limited role in
the provision of housing services, including the provision of
affordable housing. The City’s involvement with housing programs
was mainly geared to the delivery of rehabilitation programs for the
provincial and federal governments. The presence of a strong and
effective non-profit and co-operative housing sector reduced the
need for the City to be involved in the provision of affordable
housing supply programs.
In the early 90s, upper-tier governments began the process of
reducing their roles in the provision of affordable housing and
rehabilitation programs. The provincial government cancelled the
majority of social housing projects in 1995, and in 1997, announced
the "downloading" of several provincial services to
municipalities including social housing. The effect of these actions
has required the City of London to educate itself and the public on
the newly emerging responsibilities for housing.
In January of 1997, as part of the realignment of provincial and
municipal responsibilities, the province announced that it would
download responsibility for social housing to Service Managers (SM).
The City of London is the designated SM responsible for the
administration of social housing and is responsible for the delivery
of new affordable housing units and other services for the City
of London and Middlesex County.
On November 17, 1999, the federal and provincial
governments signed the necessary social housing agreement to
facilitate the transfer of social housing administration to the 47
Service Managers across Ontario. This agreement replaced all
program-specific federal/provincial housing agreements and assigned
federal responsibility for program administration for over 200,000
social housing units to the Province.
With the signing of the social housing agreement, the province also began
drafting the required legislation to enable social housing reform
and devolution. This Legislation was introduced in the legislature
on October 12, 2000 and subsequently proclaimed December 14, 2000. The
Social Housing Reform Act, 2000 provides for the transfer of
administrative control over social housing from the province to the
municipalities.
The Social Housing Reform Act states that the Service Managers
had five months following the proclamation of the social housing
legislation, to prepare and adopt a plan for the transfer of the
administration of social housing programs. This included any changes
that were proposed for the administration of public housing. At the
Point of Transfer, the administration of public housing, federal
non-profit housing and provincial non-profit and co-operative
housing moved to the municipality.
On May 22, 2001, the City of London adopted the
SHRA Transfer Plan
which describes the City’s preparation for the transfer of
provincial and federal housing program administration to the
municipality. In some instances, the Transfer Plan reflects
decisions on service delivery policy matters that were made during the planning process. The Transfer Plan
also identifies a number of remaining issues that must be
considered, as part of the ongoing planning process. The
Transfer Plan and its appendices can be found under Reports
and News Letters.
The point of transfer for the City of London and Middlesex was February 1, 2002, at which time the Housing Division
began operation.
