As a member of the Mental…

   As a member of the Mental Health and Addictions Advisory Council's Family/Caregiver Reference Panel I was part of a group of Ontarians specifically asked to provide feedback on the Advisory Council's recommendations.  Several of the Advisory Council's recommendations centre around supporting access to housing for Ontarians suffering from mental health and addiction issues by lowering income and access barriers to secure housing.  Our Panel uniformly encouraged expanding and deepening those recommendations, as we as people who support disadvantaged Ontarians clearly and unambiguously see the crucial need for improved access to economically secure housing for Ontarians living with health and addiction issues.

 It is clear that the Ministries generally have, and the Ministry of Health specifically has largely adopted many of the Advisory's recommendations, including increasing support for affordable supported housing.  LHINs are in the process of providing substantial, real funding to help address this identified and ministry accepted need. However, numerous aspects of the proposed Inclusionary Zoning regulations will explicitly restrict the ability of municipalities to address income accessible (and thereby accessible to persons with mental health and addiction issues that preclude regular employment) housing issues as they see fit.  The proposed regulations are at cross purposes with the goals of the MOHLTC and the recommendations of the Advisory because they unnecessarily limit the ability of communities that wish to work with the MOHLTC to use inclusionary zoning laws to encourage access to housing for persons with mental health and addiction issues by limiting the maximum amount of inclusionary housing that can be mandated.

 As the Ministry of Municipal affairs and Housing was clearly involved in the Advisory Council process, it is surprising that these proposed regulations do not better reflect the recommendations of that report, and it raises questions of how thoroughly the Advisory's recommendations were considered in the proposed regulations.

[Original Comment ID: 212041]