Sept. 24, 2025
Brian Sibley, executive director of Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes Inc., led a groundbreaking event Tuesday to mark the start of construction of the non-profit’s 124-unit apartment building on Upper Wentworth Street.
Cathie Coward/The Hamilton Spectator
A Hamilton non-profit housing provider has broken ground on a 124-unit mixed-income apartment building on the south Mountain.
The eight-storey building will hike the density of Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit Homes Inc.‘s existing townhouse complex on Upper Wentworth Street.
The $60-million project near Rymal Road has been seven years in the making, executive director Brian Sibley said during a groundbreaking event Tuesday.
As a non-profit, Kiwanis has a “ton of equity,” but not much cash and capacity to service debt, Sibley told reporters.
A “confluence of things,” including support from government and non-profit partners, helped Kiwanis drive the project forward.
And after a learning curve, it’s “now on a bit of a roll,” Sibley said.
The 1540 Upper Wentworth building will have 40 “deeply affordable” units for families waiting for subsidized housing.
Another 10 units will provide supportive housing for people with developmental disabilities.
And 74 apartments are to be a maximum of 120 per cent average market rent (AMR).
AMR, as measured by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), trends below what landlords ask for vacant units on the private market.
Sibley estimates the future market units will rent for $1,600 or less.
Kiwanis, which operates roughly 1,100 homes in the area, is focused on mixed-income communities, rather than solely deeply affordable ones, a model Sibley says is necessary to sustain operations.
That includes paying for new roofs and windows at the Upper Wentworth complex where some townhomes were razed to make room for the future apartment building, he noted.
“Our focus is not on building slums — our focus is on building communities that are … financially sustainable but still maintain the lowest rents.”
Two years ago, Kiwanis opened a 60-unit building on Acorn Street, off Sanford Avenue North, and has a 55-unit residence for older adults on Barton Street East in the works.
For the Upper Wentworth project, Kiwanis expects to cover nearly 60 per cent of the costs, Sibley says, but the future energy-efficient building hinges on support from all three levels of government.
The project has spanned the creation of the city’s housing secretariat, a new office dedicated to allocating government funding to non-profits, and Ottawa’s transition to a revamped national housing strategy.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced initial details of Build Canada Homes, the budding federal agency tasked with solving Canada’s housing crisis.
The approach includes developing housing on federal land with an initial focus on 4,000 “factory-built” homes on six sites in Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Longueuil, Que., and Dartmouth, N.S.
Another early cornerstone is a $1.5-billion Canada Rental Protection Fund meant to help non-profits buy “at-risk” rental buildings and preserve affordable rates.
Build Canada Homes also earmarks $1 billion to build transitional and supportive housing in collaboration with other levels of government to “pair these federal investments with employment and health-care supports.”
Build Canada Homes’ specific focus on supportive housing marks a key change in the federal approach, says Graham Cubitt, chair of Hamilton is Home, a local coalition of non-profits aiming to build thousands of affordable units.
Supportive housing is one of the “most important pieces of the puzzle” when it comes to alleviating homelessness, noted Cubitt, who’s also director of projects and development for Indwell.
Non-profit housing providers, along with city officials, have expressed frustration in trying to align capital funding with provincial health dollars to operate supportive homes.
“I think having this specific stream will make a big difference,” Cubitt said.
Hamilton is Home says its members can deliver roughly 1,300 affordable units across 19 projects in three years, depending on how Build Canada Homes rolls out.
Together, those projects, many of which have landed municipal contributions, would require about $330 million in federal financing and grants.
Without knowing the details, it’s difficult to gauge the new national approach to housing, Sibley said in an interview. “We’ll see how it evolves.”
But so far, Ottawa’s focus on larger projects with hundreds of units could require local non-profits to collaborate further on resources and assets “if we’re going to build at that scale,” Sibley noted.
In Hamilton, more than 6,000 households await subsidized housing and roughly 2,000 people are homeless.
During the groundbreaking event, Mayor Andrea Horwath lauded Kiwanis’s efforts and the help of the housing secretariat among others in tackling the housing crunch.
“It takes all of us to solve some of the biggest challenges that we face as a city.”