SRO Grants Amendment (EHT Funding Source)
Motion 22 · Council Meeting, March 31, 2026
Summary
- Amendment directing staff to use empty homes tax (EHT) revenue as the funding source for the SRO grants in Motion 23, rather than the capital grant budgets originally proposed.
- Rationale: consistent with past practice; frees up allocated capital grant capacity for additional projects; EHT is intended to support housing-related purposes and SRO upgrades qualify.
- Staff confirmed EHT is eligible; city manager clarified the change would free capacity within the relevant grant streams for other potential uses, not double the total grant envelope.
Vote
Transcript
42 segments
Yeah, thanks, Chair. I want to thank all the speakers. It's always a privilege to hear from everybody, and thank you for coming up to City Hall and sharing the impact of the work you're doing. I really appreciated reading about the pilots and the work that you've done and the ability to extend them over to six sites now. I do want to propose an amendment, Chair, if you want to take us to an amendment queue.
Thank you very much. And it's simply with respects to the source of funding. I had sent this question in earlier to staff, and I don't think I visited an email, but I got an initial response back saying staff would double check, but they had thought that that was the source of funding. And then hence my questions earlier today. And so I'm looking for council to consider this addition that says that council direct staff to utilize the EHT bracket empty homes tax as a source of funding. for the grants detailed in this report informing recommendations A and B.
Yeah, thanks very much. Just a point of information through you, Chair, to staff is around the empty homes tax. As a funding source, would that, recognizing that the funding is coming through the SRO cooling and warming room retrofit grant and the upgrading grant and the capital budget, could we be optimistic in saying that if this was approved, there'd be more funding available through those grant streams that are already identified? Because my understanding is that the empty homes tax funding is... fully subscribed and so it's not coming forward obviously as a recommendation from staff so feedback and context would be helpful
Thank you for the question. Margaret Wittgens, GMACCS. I would need finance to weigh in on the capacity of EHT relative to absorb additional funding requirements. Should council adopt this recommendation, it would free up additional capacity within the recommended funding streams that were geared towards this purpose.
Great. And how quickly could staff turn around more funding that could be used in other buildings if this was approved?
the the SRO upgrading grant program is done on a rolling basis and so we would remain available to interested parties and bring forward opportunities based on that so if this was to pass
That would mean the close to $900,000 and then the $500,000 would be covered by the empty homes tax. So we could, in theory, have another $900,000 and another $500,000 from the funds that are identified here to do even more necessary work.
We would certainly need to get into the specifics in terms of what the proposals are and how they align with those funding sources. But in principle, there would be capacity for us to look at other potential uses.
Okay. So an interpretation of this motion is then we can, in fact, double the amount of funding we have for the needs that have been outlined based on the speakers and, of course, the staff report.
Should council direct us to kind of redeploy that funding towards other purposes? That would be something we would look at doing, yes.
Okay, great. Just a quick follow-up, Mayor, point of information, just to get any thoughts or feedback from our city manager on the empty homes tax, just given that finance is not here and that sort of flagged. There's a question that was raised, and I appreciate your feedback, Margaret, sort of being asked on the spot to reference things that are not necessarily in your purview.
And maybe I could just offer a clarification on the funding. There's two funding sources that are addressed as part of recommendation A and B. One is the SRO upgrading capital, and then the other is the climate retrofits. And so when we talk about potential other uses of those funds, it would be within those funding streams that we would be doing that assessment.
Okay, thanks. Any other feedback, finance or empty homes tax folks?
Thank you, through your worship. I would need to. I am frantically messaging finance staff to better understand. You know what?
There's other speakers, and I'll save my time, and then maybe you can come back on. Thank you.
Thank you, Chancellor Frye. So I guess maybe if I could ask a question of the mover of the amendment, just because I am cognizant of when we shuffle around grant allocations, it can sometimes take away from something else. Is the intention to... keep the climate retrofit grants and the sro upgrade grants intact as they are and this is just funding this particular project through a different form or is this intention to supplant those existing grant streams
Yeah, through the chair. It's not just a plan. My intention, and I think it would be great to hear back from staff, even if that's after this meeting, was that we have a lot of pressures within housing in general. It's not to take anything away from the grants. The recommendation may be to do more in the grants. The recommendation may be to support other affordability or nonprofit measures on additional housing, but that it does free up some capacity as opposed to... leveraging or levering I should say property tax funds so I had sent this question in ahead to staff so hope to have more fulsome information on some of the impacts of it but I didn't receive that back ahead of the meeting but no I mean that the grant streams continue we may well be able to do much more with the grants as Councillor Bligh has pointed out there might be another worthy nonprofit project as well that potentially could fit under there. But I'd love to hear that information back from staff. But the intention is to spend it on similarly community benefiting initiatives in those arenas.
So in follow-up, then, if there was an amendment to your amendment that kept those two grants intact, the SRO grant and the climate grant, kept them intact.
So when you say the grant, are you referring to these specific grants or are you referring to the streams?
I'm not proposing doing anything to the streams for very...
I'm not proposing any changes to the streams at all.
Yeah, so I've got a question to staff about the purpose of the empty homes tax funding because I'm just interested to know is empty homes tax revenue intended to be spent on housing and If so, by spending it on other things, are we depriving ourselves of the ability to build new housing that would probably incorporate things like cooling rooms? I'm just trying to make a judgment about whether it would be best to use the allocated grants funding rather than dipping into empty homes tax revenue.
There may be other colleagues on the line who wish to weigh in on this, but absent that, the empty homes tax is intended to support housing. And to the extent that SROs are, SRO upgrades are supporting housing, this is deemed to be aligned. Okay. And so it's really a tradeoff for council. Okay. Great. Thanks.
Thank you. Okay, seeing no one else in the queue, we will put the amendment to a vote. Oops, sorry, Councillor Frye. Preparing an amendment to the amendment, if we can. Okay, so we're going to go to amendment queue number two. Councillor Frye, let's just add you. Perfect. Please go ahead.
Yeah, and I'm just making this look pretty. And, yeah, so this is an amendment to the amendment. Just for clarity that we'll be keeping those two grant streams intact. So I just sent it in.
And it reads, following AMB, while maintaining the SRO upgrading grants and emerging climate adaptation priorities allocation streams intact.
so that it's clear we're not defunding those.
Yeah, thanks. Just reiterating from in response to Councillor Fry's earlier question, I was not proposing any changes to the streams. Otherwise I would have put that direction in there So I don't think that this changes what I proposed if it provides council with greater comfort great But I did not they I will note the original amendment did not propose any changes to the streams It simply switched the source of funding there were no changes proposed As further to the earlier question that was asked thank you Motive just wanting the clarity
Seeing no one else in the queue, we'll put the amendment to the amendment by Councillor Fry to a vote.
And that passes.
unanimously. Great. So now we're going to go back to the amendment queue. Councillor Frye? I'm good. Thanks, Mayor. Councillor Bligh?
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty much there, but I just noted a previous comment from the mover of the amendment that hopefully we'll get more information after the fact from staff, and I just want to offer any opportunity if there has been any updates that that could be provided before we're making a decision on this motion.
So a point of information through you.
Thank you, Your Worship. I'm still seeking the exact clarity, but I will just caution that there is no unaccounted for money in terms of, I don't foresee the source of funding doubling the... grant funding, for example, if that was the question, I think it would just be dealing with the source of funding as it is. So I just wanted to clarify if that was the question.
Yeah. No, the question was not doubling the grant funding. The question was that if we transfer to the empty homes tax, the grant funding stays intact, and assuming that there's a limit to that funding, that that funding would be available for different projects.
That would be my understanding, correct.
Okay. Thank you very much to the city manager for quickly getting that answer. I'm happy to vote now. Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you very much. Seeing no one else in the queue, we will put the amendment to a vote as amended.