Vol. 6, Issue 48
Free of Charge
Tiny homes
Thursday, December 5, 2019
‘Tis the season
Pint-sized dwellings
could help ease city’s housing crisis, women say
A
CATHY DOBSON THE JOURNAL
trio of Sarnia women want City Hall to snip the red tape and allow construction of “tiny homes” as an alternative to rising rents and big mortgages. Jennifer McCann, Lisa Melanson and Michelle Parks plan to work with Habitat for Humanity creating new homes of less than 500-square-feet of floor space selling for under $50,000. But first, they need city council to pass a bylaw allowing multiple houses on a single serviced lot. “The need for affordable housing is huge here and tiny homes can help address that,” said McCann. The women, who call themselves Sarnia Making Affordable Living in Lambton, or SMALL, are getting positive feedback from city and county representatives, they say. To make the homes affordable, they envision four per building lot, each serviced from one source. Tiny homes are ideal for single parents with one child, Millennials, seniors, college students and other individuals having difficulty paying for housing, said McCann. “These mixed communities can uplift a neighbourhood. Continued on 3
SARNIAN FRANK CANINO and his granddaughter Charlie Rose McDonnell visit Sarnia’s Celebration of Lights on Nov. 29. TROY SHANTZ The Journal
Boom time in Sarnia for skilled trades
U
TROY SHANTZ THE JOURNAL
nion leaders are hunting across Canada for skilled workers as industrial construction ramps up in the Chemical Valley. At least 600 tradespeople are on-site at the $2.2-billion Nova Chemicals project, which includes a new polyethylene plant and expansion of the Corunna
“cracker” unit. The Nova project is expected to create 150 full-time manufacturing jobs and up to 1,400 construction jobs, with plant startup slated for late 2021. A planned maintenance shutdown at Imperial Oil next year will require hundreds more skilled tradespeople. Those and other projects are generating more activity than Sarnia has seen in at least a decade, said John Swart, head
of the Sarnia-Lambton Building and Construction Trades Council. “(We’re) currently looking right across the country,” said Swart, who is also business manager of the 300-member Insulators Union, Local 95. “And I know the carpenters, pipefitters, boilermakers are all in the same boat right now. This is going to be a very busy year. It’s good for the whole community.”
Regional projects are also impacting the local labour market, said Laura Greaves, executive director of the Sarnia-Lambton Workforce Development Board (SLWDB). Bruce Power near Kincardine, Ont. begins a 13-year replacement of major components in January, and construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor and Detroit will need workers until 2023. Continued on 3
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