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If you've driven or walked past Lucy’s Place on Essa Road in Barrie, you may have seen the three shipping containers which officials hope could at least partially help alleviate the city's affordable housing crisis.
BarrieToday has learned the shipping containers that are being used as modular homes are on site and being prepped to become six living units.
Visible from the road, the stacked containers tower over Lucy’s Place, which is a motel conversion project aimed reducing homelessness using the Housing First principles. The containers at Lucy's Place, which opened in May 2019 and is located between Anne Street and Fairview Road, will eventually house community members who are most in need for a roof over their heads.
Social housing in Barrie is handled by the County of Simcoe.
John Connell, the county’s implementation manager for social housing, indicated in an email to BarrieToday that the operating funds for the container project are coming from the province and any other sources of provincial funding, specifics of which are expected to be announced by provincial officials at a later date.
However, Connell did speak about the county’s financial commitment to the container plan.
“As service manager for housing and homelessness services, the county will allocate provincial operational funding for support services and rent subsidies for the six new units,” he said.
Connell also confirmed the county will continue to fund, build and support affordable housing across a range of housing types, including consideration of innovative built forms, such as factory-built housing.
“Lucy’s Place has had a tremendous impact on our communities and the individuals we serve. The needs continue to grow and we are excited to expand Lucy’s Place by these additional six units, in partnership with Redwood Park Communities and the Busby Centre, to address increased demand,” Connell said.
A representative from Redwood Park Communities said they were unable to speak about the container project at this time.
An email to Barrie-Innisfil MPP Andrea Khanjin about the project was answered by staff member at the constituency office who said the MPP was unavailable for comment until Monday.
City of Barrie spokesperson Scott Lamantia told BarrieToday that the Essa Road property where the containers currently sit is owned by the county, with a service agreement with Redwood Park Communities.
“It is prefabricated, modular construction. They have scoped site-plan approval and a building permit has been issued,” Lamantia said. “The city is not aware of any future plans. In the past, the site has received Community Improvement Plan (CIP) funding (in 2020 and 2021), but not for this most recent six units in 2022.”
And this isn't the first time shipping containers have been discussed as a way to address the city's housing crisis.
A similar project at Barrie’s old fire-hall site, located at Vespra and Innisfil streets, was voted down by city council in May 2021 as a proposed site for similar modular housing. At the time, a city staff report listed several reasons why the project should not proceed.
The report said that unsuitable soil would need to be removed within the building area and extending five metres beyond. As well, about 4,500 metric tonnes needs to be removed, at an estimated cost of $500,000 for dewatering, removing the existing soil and replacing it with engineered fill.
The containers placed at Lucy's Place, meanwhile, were manufactured by Northern Shield Development Corporation (NDSC), a local company that got its start building housing units out of shipping containers for the oil and gas, power, and mining marketplace.
In an interview with BarrieToday in 2021, NDSC owner and president Steve Marshall spoke about how affordable housing needs to be looked at in a different way and said “the bottom line is shipping containers is an alternative to conventional construction."