GUYSBOROUGH — A grassroots housing organization in Guysborough County has begun work on what it describes as the region’s first locally driven effort to develop a housing strategy focused specifically on the needs of African Nova Scotian communities.
Community First: Guysborough County Housing Association is taking part in an eight-month program delivered through the University of Toronto, with the aim of producing a formal proposal for a local African Nova Scotian housing project later this year.
According to Community First spokesperson Nancy O’Regan, the initiative – which concludes in May – builds on plans laid by a local seniors action group led in part by Mary Desmond, district 2 councillor for the Municipality of the District of Guysborough (MODG).
“We did the pre-development, all the survey work and stuff like that,” Desmond said. “But we’re a social club. We don’t want to be housing developers. It was there in limbo.”
Said O’Regan: “I think they’ve been really waiting for someone to kind of pick it up,” O’Regan said. “So I just said, ‘let’s pick it up.’ We’ll start the conversations at least.”
The online course through the Social Purpose Real Estate (SPRE) Accelerator – a capacity-building program delivered by the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto – is designed to help nonprofit and charitable organizations advance the early, pre-development stages of housing and community-focused real estate projects.
Through the program, Community First members – O’Regan, Nathan Sparks, Juanita Byard and Susan Cashin, MODG district 6 councillor and an ex-officio member of the housing group’s board – meet in regular online sessions to review existing research, examine development models such as land trusts and assess what types of housing solutions might be viable locally.
O’Regan said the course is structured so participants apply each stage of learning directly to their own work, building a prospective project incrementally over the eight months with the aim of emerging with a viable housing proposal that can be brought back to the community for discussion.
She stressed that the initiative remains community driven. “We’re trying not to overstep,” she said. “What we’re doing is learning. We hope to come out of it with a proposal around a housing project the community likes and is viable.”
Desmond said she views the current effort as the natural next step for an idea that has remained unfinished.
“When it started, it went on fire,” she said. “Everybody was on board. The municipality was on board, the provincial government was on board... Now they’re taking the courses… and the idea is to come out of it with a game plan to move forward. This is kind of the next step for boots-on-the-ground.”
