Guelph is “a city of resilience,” mayor says in state of the city address

Mayor Cam Guthrie has described Guelph arsenic a metropolis of resilience.

The State of the City Address connected Thursday focused connected lodging and the 2025 fund among different topics.

A batch of the “heavy lifting” the metropolis did successful the past 12 months was astir housing, Guthrie said.

“The dense lifting revolved astir interior process changes to marque things easier and faster — argumentation and zoning changes to let much flexibility of the benignant of lodging we tin person successful the metropolis of Guelph.”

Although Guthrie didn’t scope his extremity of reducing the budget’s taxation levy to 4 per cent oregon less, helium said metropolis unit did bring the levy down from astir 10 per cent to conscionable nether 7 per cent.

During his speech, Guthrie acknowledged however hard the past twelvemonth has been for residents and businesses successful the Royal City. He said that successful spite of specified challenges, helium is arrogant to spot however Guelph demonstrated its resiliency.

Guthrie said the metropolis tin propulsion unneurotic amid the uncertainty of U.S tariffs, provincial and national elections and housing.

“We are a resilient city. We’ve gone done hard times and determination is simply a batch of uncertainty successful the satellite today,” helium said. “We request to admit that and admit those uncertainties. but besides admit that we arsenic a assemblage tin upwind these storms, we tin get done these issues.”

Guthrie praised the city’s moving relationships with assemblage partners to code issues specified arsenic homelessness.

Some of the different highlights included kickstarting the imaginable logistics connected an encampment tract and leveraging city-owned lands for housing.

The metropolis had a provincial lodging people of 1,500 homes successful 2024. As of the astir caller reporting date, determination person been lone 849 lodging starts oregon little than 60 per cent of the target. The metropolis didn’t conscionable its extremity owed to builders and developers facing higher gathering costs and precocious involvement rates.

Forty-one retired of the 50 municipalities that are provincially tracked didn’t conscionable their lodging target, and retired of those that did miss their target, Guelph’s show is inactive successful the apical 30 per cent.

The metropolis said it besides did good successful immoderate forms of non-market housing. Kindle Communities opened 10 Shelldale successful June, a five-storey gathering offering astir 3 twelve supportive lodging units. The pursuing month, Wellington County opened structure abstraction astatine Norfolk Manor for 68 radical with around-the-clock staffing support.

In addition, the University of Guelph announced successful precocious November that it is processing a caller on-campus residence gathering for first-year students for the archetypal clip successful 25 years.