KENORA – Federal funding is helping Kekekoziibii Development Corporation add dozens of housing units to the city on Lake of the Woods.
The corporation, owned by Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, has obtained $8.7 million in federal money to buy 20.3 acres and put up “a 24-unit apartment building for affordable housing for urban Indigenous people who are living and taking training in the city of Kenora,” Kekekoziibii chief executive officer Diane Redsky said Wednesday.
The land near 9th Street has water, sewer and hydro service connections, Redsky said.
Construction is slated to begin next spring and the corporation aims “to build more apartment buildings on that site for affordable housing, because we know that there is an extreme shortage of housing in Kenora,” she said.
Kekekoziibii is finalizing architectural plans, has hired a general contractor and has been in regular meetings with city officials “to make sure we have all our ducks in a row,” she added.
Kekekoziibii’s funding was announced Monday in Thunder Bay during a news conference featuring NICHI chief executive officer John Gordon and federal Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu.
They also announced $10 million in funding for Seven Generations Education Institute to build 68 units of supportive and transitional housing near its Kenora campus.
Funding was also for affordable housing projects in Muskrat Dam First Nation, Thunder Bay and other locations in Northern Ontario.
The money is part of the federal government’s $281.5-million plan to fund the creation of 3,781 housing units in northern urban, rural and remote communities, and is being distributed through NICHI.
The way Gordon describes it, NICHI is both old and new.
“If we just look to the actual story of NICHI, it started in November of 2022 when about 22 urban, rural and northern Indigenous organizations came together and decided to form a national Indigenous collaborative housing organization,” he told Newswatch after Monday’s news conference.
“But really, the story starts back in these seventies when urban Indigenous organizations started to provide housing.
“And it rolls through to the nineties when the federal government was getting out of the housing business and a number of Indigenous housing providers came together to say ‘Instead of devolving this and giving the money to the provinces, the housing (funding) for Indigenous people should go to Indigenous people. We have the right answers, we have the solutions.’”
The National Aboriginal Housing Association was formed, and many provincial and regional organizations emerged; eventually, in 2022, they came together to establish NICHI “saying we have the solutions to Indigenous housing issues across Canada and we want to be in control,” Gordon said.
“Housing is fundamentally the foundation of everything,” he said. “It’s the foundation of being happy. It’s the foundation of providing – having a roof over your head in a secure and safe place to lay your head down at night.
“It’s a place where you can build a successful life – and I won’t buy into the idea that a successful life is having a university education and a BMW and a $100,000 a year job.
“Success is just being happy and having a safe, secure place to raise a family and do the things that people do.”
Housing, said Gordon, “is the foundation for everything. It’s a foundation upon which you build a happy and successful life, whatever you choose it to be.”
