Affordable Housing is a benefit to any given community, and Portage has some funding to get it started here. They're is looking for an organization that can help.

Local Immigration Partnership Program coordinator Mitch Tilk says the Portage Community Revitalization Corporation is putting the word out, noting money has been set aside to get things rolling.

"We're looking for, hopefully, organizations that have experience running affordable housing in the community already," says Tilk. "If not, that's okay, too. Everybody can feel free to apply. We're hoping that there'll be some organization that is used to these systems of the rent subsidies and things like that, that just wants to add a few units to their overall portfolio."

Tilk explains it's hard to start from scratch on a project like this, with no previous experience, making it desirable to work with a group that has experience.

"We're going to be building a 5-unit complex," continues Tilk. "We have the land and the money, and that's pretty much ready to go. There are certain criteria. The Manitoba government has to be able to call something 'affordable housing' under their threshold. So, they would have to agree to be under those thresholds for 20 years as part of the takeover of this project. But other than that, I don't think we had too many stipulations about who can apply or anything like that."

He notes affordable housing is somewhat of a nebulous term, adding everyone considers their current home to be affordable to them.  Tilk says Manitoba has criteria related to income levels that qualify people to take part. 

He adds there's not a huge incentive to actually build affordable housing.

PCRC executive director Mari Lawrence says they're a capacity-building organization and notes they know that some organizations already doing housing might be a better fit to take it over the project once it's built.

"This was a partnership with the City of Portage," says Lawrence. "They received federal funding to do affordable housing and they flowed that to PCRC because they thought that we could execute it. We're excited to be able to build some affordable housing units and start somewhere in our community with that."

She adds the city will help them select who will eventually be awarded the request for proposal along with representatives from PCRC, making it a continued partnership. You can read more on the PCRC website here.