{"id":34321,"date":"2024-03-07T11:54:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34321"},"modified":"2024-03-07T11:54:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T16:54:57","slug":"town-will-look-at-three-potential-sites-for-mens-transitional-and-emergency-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/town-will-look-at-three-potential-sites-for-mens-transitional-and-emergency-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"Town will look at three potential sites for men\u2019s transitional and emergency housing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Town will explore three potential sites for a new men\u2019s transitional and emergency housing building within Aurora, following Council\u2019s refusal last month of a proposed site on Yonge Street, just south of Industrial Parkway South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision came following a motion from Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland who presented it at last week\u2019s Council Meeting, a second attempt to get it on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe homelessness crisis is taking a devastating toll on families and communities, undermining a healthy and prosperous way of life,\u201d said Councillor Gilliland in her motion, noting \u201cCouncil accepts that the responsibility to address these challenges rests with community stakeholders, partners and residents, as well as regional, federal and provincial governments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Town of Aurora recently adopted a motion to commit to ending homelessness in the community in collaboration with the Region, and both the Provincial and Federal governments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to her motion, Councillor Gilliland said, \u201cAurora does need to do its part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs you are aware, Council did deny an application recently for transitional housing and we are in much need of being proactive in finding a solution for the most vulnerable people in our community. I feel especially as an elected official that it is our job to be proactive in this and offer as much solution and assistance as we can as a municipality \u2013 find some properties of interest since that seemed to be the real root cause of this application being denied was the location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis motion, I hope, triggers a plan of action on alternatives sooner rather than later and I am asking my fellow colleagues to support this in doing so as soon as possible so we don\u2019t make any delay. The resolution in front of us does ask staff to identify three potential sites for alternative housing in Aurora and to work with York Region staff. I encourage if any Council members have any ideas or recommendations or things they would like to contribute, by all means let\u2019s get our heads together and be a part of the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporting the motion was Ward 5 Councillor John Gallo who said he had spent \u201csignificant time\u201d between the previous week\u2019s General Committee meeting, when Council refused to waive procedural bylaw on a two-thirds vote after Councillor Gilliland missed the deadline to have the same motion included on the agenda by a day, considering locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI spent significant time between that meeting and now trying on my own to look at areas of Aurora that could be potential sites for this transitional housing and I have personally identified two,\u201d he said. \u201cShould this pass, I will be happy to share those with staff once it gets moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he supported the motion, he said he would have preferred a tighter timeline given the urgency of the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the end of February and it will be nearly another year gone by,\u201d said Councillor Gallo, who was one of the four votes against the Yonge and Industrial site last month. \u201cI would like to see a tighter timeline, perhaps the summer\u2026I don\u2019t want to wait until the end of the year to get this going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timeline in the motion, said Councillor Gilliland, was suggested to her by staff and CAO Doug Nadorozny added his counterpart at the Region \u201cfelt it was going to take some time to come up with three sites the Region was comfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does say before the end of 2024,\u201d said Councillor Gallo. \u201cWe all spoke of the urgency of this \u2013 those that were even pro or against the particular site. We all spoke to the urgency of this and I just don\u2019t want to keep it lingering on. I will do my part to make recommendations that I think are viable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Mayor Tom Mrakas didn\u2019t speak to the motion, he supported it \u2013 and subsequently made a suggestion of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Town\u2019s representative at the Region of York, he has put forward a motion in this capacity calling on Regional staff to \u201creview all Regionally-owned buildings for the purposes of identifying those that are under and\/or unused and provide an analysis of those that can be potentially repurposed for other regional priorities, including supportive housing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYork Region has recently adopted a true hybrid work policy where 60 per cent of the staff will work only 50 per cent of their work week on site,\u201d he said in his motion. \u201cRegional office buildings, including the 422,000 square foot Regional Head Office on Yonge Street will now, as a consequence, have sizable areas of under- and unused taxpayer funded office space available for other purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Town will explore three potential sites for a new men\u2019s transitional and emergency housing building within Aurora, following Council\u2019s refusal last month of a proposed site on Yonge Street, just south of Industrial Parkway South. The decision came following a motion from Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland who presented it at last week\u2019s Council […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8Vz","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 12:55:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}