A newly launched survey aims to get a sense of housing needs in North Hastings.
Krys McGuire, a Housing Project Manager with North Hastings Community Trust, says the survey hopes to make clear what type of housing support is needed in the community and how to help those with precarious housing situations.
But the survey isn’t just for those in a tough spot. McGuire encourages those not struggling with housing to still do the survey, as the more data gathered the better.
The survey is available here and will remain up until Dec. 10.
The work is the result of a grant from a Community Housing Transformation Centre, a Canada-wide nonprofit that supports housing groups.
“A lot of the time, information that’s gathered is not gathered the same way in rural areas, as compared to big cities,” McGuire says. “It’s trying to fill that gap. It’s also trying to capture some qualitative data, showing how much people’s income is being spent on housing.”
McGuire says the survey will give a sense of how many households are spending more than 30 per cent of their income on their living situation, a threshold that many groups use to determine when someone’s at risk.