Summary: The big news is our potential pivot from a condo ownership model to rental co-operative housing, with an application for CMHC funding to make units more attainable. Peterborough is also a sports city: we discuss both the participatory and spectator sports available for all ages. See photos from the Millbrook Zucchini Fest, and Erika discusses what attracted her to cohousing.

We welcome feedback and ideas. Send email to outreach@kawarthacommons.ca.   

NEW READERS who are asking “What is cohousing? What are KCC’s goals? What will the building and site be like?” “How can I find out more?” will find lots of information on  our website: https://kawarthacommons.ca/

This newsletter and subsequent versions will have three main sections.

1. UPDATE ON THE SITE AND THE BUILDING 

2. GETTING TO KNOW OUR PETERBOROUGH: What Peterborough area has to offer you. (This month it’s Sports, both spectator and participatory, youth and adult)

3. OTHER KCC NEWS (including “What has attracted me to cohousing”, part of a series by members)

UPDATE ON THE SITE AND THE BUILDING

It has been an incredibly exciting, busy two months! With the rising construction costs for new condo builds, the price of an individually owned new unit was driving some cohousing supporters away from KCC. Then in early June, faced with a national housing crisis, CMHC (Canada  Mortgage and Housing Corporation) announced its first major funding in over thirty years for co-operative rental housing, with the opening application deadline on September 15.

The CMHC program provides a loan covering up to 100% of costs, including land acquisition, soft costs such as architectural fees, and the actual construction costs. The loan has a low interest rate, with one-third of the loan being forgivable provided conditions are met over 20 years, and the rest being amortized up to 50 years. A major requirement is that rents cannot be more than 110% of the median of rents for builds since 2000 in the Peterborough area, and as an applicant, KCC is required to complete a feasibility spreadsheet proving that all our expenses, including loan payments, can be covered by the permitted rents. 

What a scramble! We’ve reduced construction costs as much as possible while not sacrificing the important goals of cohousing, located a local general contractor that is keen to take us on, developed a realistic operating budget, sought support from local politicians, and successfully applied for formation of a co-operative corporation as required for the application, called Maryland Avenue Cohousing Co-operative Inc. or MACCI.  Wonderful news is that local company Mortlock Construction has agreed to be our general contractor. Mortlock Construction has extensive experience in low-energy construction and is currently building a 53-unit affordable housing building for the City of Peterborough. If our application is successful, we will transfer the assets of KCC to the new co-operative. We don’t yet satisfy all the requirements for submission, but CMHC says that we should submit now. They will, at least, give feedback for a subsequent application in the new year, and may even let us proceed now if we can satisfy the remaining requirements (such as rezoning) in a reasonable time.

In many ways, the co-operative model is a better fit for cohousing than the condo model. In a co-operative, all members legally must have a voice in its operations, and when a renter does move, the co-op has the right to select the replacement which should guarantee new members who are really keen about cohousing principles. More good news is that several previous KCC members who had withdrawn because of the high condo prices are saying that they can rejoin under the rental model! We also carried out a survey of the 900 subscribers to our monthly newsletter, receiving 120 replies. Over a hundred said they were interested in joining KCC under a rental model.  So cross your fingers that our CMHC application will be approved. It is a competitive process and we know that we will be competing against many other projects, but it felt important to try.

As a concluding piece of good news, all of the studies required by the City have just been submitted for the “Technical Adequacy Review”, the next major step before the rezoning application. We expect a response from the City in about 6 weeks.

GETTING TO KNOW OUR PETERBOROUGH:
SPORTS  IN PETERBOROUGH

We’ve focused on the Arts in the last several issues of the KCC newsletter in the Getting To Know Our Peterborough section. Peterborough has a well deserved record for excellence in the arts, but the City is probably better known as a sports City, with strong teams competing nationally in hockey and lacrosse. For those who love the roar of a partisan spectator crowd, you can’t beat a Memorial Centre game with the Peterborough Petes hockey club or the Peterborough Lakers lacrosse team!

The Peterborough Petes of the Ontario Hockey League are a Junior-level team established in 1956. It is the longest continuously operating team in the league and regularly reaches the national Memorial Cup playoffs. The Petes are a major feeder team for the NHL, producing players such as Eric and Jordan Staal, Cory Stillman, Chris Pronger, Steve Yzerman, Bob Gainey, Mike Ricci, Tie Domi, Mickey Redmond, and Wayne Gretzky, and several NHL coaches. The Peterborough Lakers lacrosse team are 18-time national Mann Cup Champions.

For younger cohousing families, there is a very active program of youth hockey, ball, and soccer, for both boys and girls. For example, the City has run an age 9 - 11 hockey tournament for years, with 87 teams playing across 4 days in 2023 alone. The City has many outdoor and indoor facilities, supporting a wide range of programs for youth and adults of all ages from skating on the canal to pickleball. For the avid hockey-playing seniors in KCC, the Peterborough Senior Hockey Club offers memberships at three age levels - Freedom 55, Seniors and Elder Skatesmen. Teams play two games a week at the Kinsmen Arena from September until March. This past August, seven members of the Peterborough club were inducted into the Canadian 80+ Hockey Hall of Fame.

There is also a well developed and interconnected series of walking and cycling trails, many following abandoned rail lines in the area and joining with the Trans Canada Trail. 

Welcome to the sports side of Peterborough!

OTHER KCC NEWS

KCC members at the Millbrook  Zucchini Fest September 8

What draws me to cohousing by Erika Steinhubl

I lived and worked for 2 years in Tonga, South Pacific, in the 70s as an ESL teacher with CUSO. This was my first experience living in community: where neighbours looked out for each other, where teenage boys cared for babies and girls helped their dads fix fishing nets, where families cared for their elders.

As my life unfolded—marriage and two children with separation when they were 8 and 10—we co-parented but I had to suddenly make all my own decisions and it was tough. I looked for the caring community I’d left in Tonga but it didn’t exist in Peterborough until Scott Donovan talked about starting a cohousing community. I was interested but didn’t think I could afford the cost at that time. Now that I’m retired and a grandmother of new twins, I don’t want my children having to worry about me as I age and when I reconnected with Kawartha Commons Cohousing, I knew I had found my people: people I enjoy attending meetings with, cooking together, going to events, checking that we are managing well. All families joining KCC, the young and old, can make our community fun and caring.