STRAIT AREA – The Town of Port Hawkesbury and the Municipality of the County of Richmond have each taken steps to address a void in affordable housing within the Strait Area.

Town officials will soon send Port Hawkesbury residents a link to an online survey that will ask them for their top priorities in terms of housing developments. At the same time, the town is preparing to strike a citizens’ committee that will examine the survey responses and make their own recommendations to town council in terms of low-income housing possibilities for 2021 and beyond.

Meanwhile, in Richmond County, council has received an independent consultant’s estimates for an extension of water and sewer lines that was requested by a developer hoping to set up an affordable housing complex in Arichat.

According to the county’s Director of Public Works, Chris Boudreau, an inquiry to SRT International resulted in three options which placed the price-tag of such a project between $570,000 and $709,000.

Responding to a request from Deputy Warden Michael Diggdon, Boudreau also pointed out that the county could not bring the price down by conducting their own in-house engineering on the project because the municipal Public Works Department does not have the capacity to carry out such studies.

To further solidify the costs required to carry out the extensions and the role of the municipality in funding this work, the issue is now under scrutiny by the municipality’s Policy and By-Laws Committee. A committee meeting scheduled for this week is slated to determine what council’s exact role in the project could be, should the price tag for the water and sewer extensions fall below $500,000.

District Three councillor Melanie Sampson described these discussions as critical to the advancement of the project, given that the current by-laws governing such projects are “vague” and require more clarification before the current affordable-housing proposal can take another step forward.