A Hamilton non-profit aims to break ground this summer on a 126-unit apartment building that serves as a
beachhead of affordability on the Mountain as rents rise across the city.
Years in the making, the planned eight-storey building at 1540 Upper Wentworth St. is
Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes' largest solo project.
City council's recent decision to allocate $3.5 million toward the project was “the last brick in the wall that allowed us to get over the top,” Kiwanis executive director Brian Sibley says.
The new energy-efficient building is to rise from a parcel on a stretch of Upper Wentworth between Rymal and Stone Church roads alongside Kiwanis's existing 85-unit townhouse complex. Fifteen of those are to be demolished to make room for it.
It will have a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments with rates ranging from deeply affordable rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units to no more than 125 per cent of average market rent (AMR).
That works out to $1,440 a month for a two-bedroom at the future 1540 Upper Wentworth building, Sibley noted. “If you have two people working at Tim Hortons, they would be able to afford this rent.”
AMR, which is determined by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), skews considerably lower than what private-sector landlords fetch upon unit turnover in the open market.
