Rent relief continues for residents at former Lions Place after $3.3M deal
Province's 3-year rent supplement gives tenants at downtown Winnipeg building 'sigh of relief'
Residents living at a former non-profit seniors' complex in downtown Winnipeg will continue to get some relief on rent for the next three years.
The province confirmed Friday it has entered a $3.3-million rent supplement agreement with the private company that now owns the building formerly known as Lions Place.
It said 241 units in the building at 610 Portage Ave. will be eligible for rent subsidy, and there won't be any rent hikes above the annual increase allowed under provincial guidelines, which was set at 1.7 per cent for 2025.
Housing Minister Bernadette Smith said her department met the seniors on Thursday to give them the news.
"There was a lot of instability for folks there. A lot of folks had moved out," she said. "This is really just to let them know that they can stay [in] this community."
Tom Simms, whose 95-year-old mother has lived in the building for 25 years, said residents were very anxious ahead of the announcement.
"A number of residents were saying you could just feel in the building a sigh of relief," he said, though he added they still have some concerns.
"This is like a bittersweet consolation prize," Simms said.
"The previous government allowed the building to be sold to a big corporate … business in Alberta. And so the largest non-profit seniors' housing building in Manitoba was lost to the private sector," he said.
"[They] did not protect the seniors' interests."
Lions Place, built in 1982, provided rent-geared-to-income housing for those age 55 and over, and was one of the largest non-profit housing units in the province.
The for-profit real estate company Mainstreet Equity purchased the 287-unit building — now rebranded as Residences at Portage Commons — in early 2023 and removed the age restriction.
A report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said the sale represented a "major loss" for affordable seniors' housing.
News of the rent assistance is "like a load lifted off of people," said Gerald Brown, 88, who's lived in the building for 10 years.
"It's a great place to live," he said. "It was built as a great place for seniors to live, and we're doing our best here now and we're excited that we are going to be protected."
The former Progressive Conservative government had provided $1.2 million in rent subsidies to prevent increases for tenants after the sale, but the two-year agreement expired in February, Simms said.
The government is working on legislation that would require owners get permission to sell social housing that receives 15 per cent or more funding from the federal and provincial governments for financing or construction, although that change wouldn't have applied to Lions Place, Minister Smith said Friday.
Simms said residents have also asked the province to get a formal agreement with the owner that would protect amenities like a greenhouse, a store in the building and food service.
"They're not able to cook their meals, and so that's key," he said. "With the change in the building, the younger people don't use the food service … so there's a real threat."
"It has many good amenities," said Norm Pohl, who has lived in the building for six years. "It's a good, solid building."
With files from Meaghan Ketcheson and Matt Humphrey