Ottawa Community Housing will expand to the south end suburb of Barrhaven as it plans to erect 32 family-sized units in the area before the end of the year.

The housing corporation plans to buy a plot of land on Jockvale Road from the City of Ottawa for a toonie. While other organizations have a few buildings in Barrhaven, the project will be a first for the city's largest social housing provider. 

"I think some of the areas outside of the Greenbelt are under-served with affordable housing," said chief development officer Cliff Youdale. "[It's] good to see more go out there."

Ottawa Community Housing, which runs at arm's length from the city, currently has limited supply outside the Greenbelt with just two buildings located in the west end suburb of Kanata and rural area of North Gower.

Almost all of its 15,000 affordable housing units are located in older parts of the city inside the Greenbelt, because most of its housing stock is from before amalgamation, Youdale said.

The city also struggles with an ever-increasing number of families seeking emergency shelter, which often leads to many housed in motel rooms in the urban core for several months at a time.

Family homelessness tends to be considered a downtown issue, but that's mainly because shelters are located there, Youdale said, and this $10 million project should help address that need by providing larger units that would be more costly to build in older parts of the city. 

At the site on Jockvale Road near Longfields Drive, the plan is to build two- and three-bedroom stacked townhomes, including seven on the ground floor that will be accessible.

"The need for affordable housing is across the spectrum, and a lot of the jobs — they're not all downtown. They are in Barrhaven, they are in Kanata," said Youdale, who hopes this is the catalyst for similar projects in the suburbs.

Ottawa's finance and economic development committee approved the $2 sale of the city-owned surplus land on Tuesday morning.

City of Ottawa general manager Stephen Willis said the site was the "perfect opportunity" to tap into funds under the federal government's rapid housing initiative because it was ready for building.

That federal program required housing providers to use modular construction in a bid to get housing built more quickly.

Mississauga-based BECC Construction has been hired to build the units in the Toronto area and then deliver the modules to Ottawa and assemble them on site. This will be the first time Ottawa Community Housing has used such a method.

Costs to build affordable housing have also climbed during the pandemic, meaning projects take longer to complete, and that's why the deadline for these modules was pushed to the end of this year instead of April 2022.

In a future phase, at least another 25 more units could be added to the Barrhaven site once funding is available.

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