Hope Lee retires }} City’s progressive housing stance a reflection of Lee’s leadership
RODERICK BENNS Publisher It was always a little bit personal for Hope Lee. After 34 years with the city’s housing division, she retires in May. Lee traces her career path back to her childhood, a time when she lived in public housing in Lindsay for several years. When Lee was living in a single parent family in one of the very units that the city still owns, Zita Devan, founder of A Place Called Home, the city’s homeless shelter, set Lee on the path she’d stay on for more than three decades. Devan helped get Lee a work placement in what was then the Victoria Haliburton Housing Authority in 1986 through a Fleming College program. Lee was hired full time in 1987.
Hope Lee at a Bond Street housing development in Lindsay, 2019. Photo: City of Kawartha Lakes.
Later, the name changed to Kawartha Lakes Haliburton Housing Corporation when social housing was transferred from the province to municipalities in 2001, part of the significant downloading of responsibilities to municipalities that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s. “While some may have seen that transfer in a more negative light, I’ve never felt that way,” Hope tells the Advocate. “It opened up my position to be able to focus not only on the actual housing corporation but local affordable housing and homelessness overall.” She says she has felt “blessed to have a career I’ve enjoyed and where I can help people.” Great working relationships and a feeling of support from her director, the Kawartha Lakes Housing board, administration, and councils in both Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County have made her job easier and more fulfilling. “I’m proud overall of the progress made in this community when it comes to housing and homelessness. There are amazing community partners and advocates,” Lee says. Under Lee’s oversight, Kawartha Lakes has been a progressive leader when it comes to housing. The city, for instance, is one of only 33 municipalities in Canada to attempt to end chronic homelessness through Built for Zero, an initiative to help a core group of leading communities create a template for the rest of the country for ending homelessness. Lee says she’s proud to have led numerous new developments that have been successfully built or are in the midst of being built. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing hundreds of new affordable units be built and occupied — in many cases providing homes to those who hadn’t had a place of their own in quite some time.” She also cites the redevelopment of the emergency shelter, A Place Called Home, as a big accomplishment
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