Community Housing

The human services team delivers community housing services through 69 buildings (including apartments, semi-detached facilities, and townhouses) with 660 separate units. The residences are occupied by individuals, couples, and families. The County is responsible for both interior and exterior maintenance. While the County provides assistance to other housing providers within the community, this asset management plan focuses on only those assets owned by Oxford County.

This portfolio is categorized into two components: community housing facilities along with related furniture and equipment and renewable energy assets. While most renewable energy assets are planned for under the corporate facilities portfolio, the renewable energy assets included in this portfolio are funded by community housing and form part of the reporting on community housing expenditures and revenue.

Inventory

Replacement costs were determined by recent tenders where possible, comparison to insured values, use of costs obtained during the 2025 budget process along with other estimates from County staff where inflated historical costs were deemed to be insufficient. The current inventory under the community housing component includes assets purchased by the County in February 2025.

Condition

The percentage of assets in poor or critical condition has remained at 38% as reported in the 2024 AMP. The percentage of assets in good or excellent condition increased from 12% as reported in the 2024 AMP to 16%. These changes are reflective of lifecycle activities completed in 2024.

Key Performance

The objective of Community Housing is to provide well maintained buildings and property, ensuring safe, accessible and efficient spaces for clients to enhance their quality of life and contribute to their community.  Through the Strategic Plan, the County has committed to making our community 100% Housed, which highlights the need to maintain our community housing stock.

Proposed Levels of Service Review

Information on the scenarios reviewed is contained within the AMP document. The current reserve balance is factored into each scenario as available funding to complete existing asset lifecycle needs. As the reserve balance and proposed funding under all scenarios are sufficient to fund the short-term lifecycle needs, the average anticipated condition of the portfolio is similar in the near term. This is in part possible due to recent grant funding the County has received towards this portfolio.

Risk mitigation measures are similar across all scenarios. Maintenance activities are completed during a move out / move in vacancy period to minimize disruption to clients. A client may be moved to a vacant unit, if available, due to a failure or a more extensive lifecycle need that was not identified during a move out / move in. Impacts from larger failures can be mitigated using outside housing resources, such as hotel facilities, although this approach would be cost prohibitive in the long term. 

Based on the analysis, staff are recommending Scenario C, the proposed level of service target is to achieve 75% funding for this portfolio. The community housing portfolio has a lower risk tolerance than the corporate facilities portfolio as the risk mitigation measures would come at significant cost. It is therefore important to achieve a higher funding level to more cost effectively manage this portfolio. Staff identified an improvement area to review lifecycle strategies for various facility components as it may be beneficial in the long-term to not anticipate a run-to-failure strategy for some assets. Once incorporated this may result in reductions to the annual investment required. Through the 2025 budget survey nearly 66% of respondents indicated that the service levels related to housing should be maintained or enhanced.

Funding Gap Analysis

Planned Investment Level
An estimated inflationary rate is used in the table below in both the required investment and planned investment figures. Although interest rates are declining, the reserve balance is projected to grow over the 10-year period increasing the overall interest earned and contributing to closing of the funding gap in the near-term.

Proposed Investment Change
In addition to the planned investment level changes, an increase in the contribution to the Social Housing reserve of approximately 3% annually is proposed over the 10-year period, which amounts to a $41,000 levy increase for 2026.

Comparison of required investment to proposed investment (millions)