New development in Sandwich may ease homelessness

Moving from advertisement to advertisements on Kijiji and settling for a house without seeing is a common practice for many students who come to study abroad in Windsor. This provides them with a home when they land in Canada, most of them, for the first time.

Usually they pay their rent, first and last months’, before they see the room in person. And when they do see it with their own eyes, many do feel that they have been duped.

“This house looks pretty from outside, but it’s been deteriorated inside. We are on a lease, so we are bound to pay for it. Now, for like one year, we must pay $350 per person, per month,” said Khushagr Mudgil, who joined St. Clair college in Fall of 2019. “To be honest, the condition of the house is not that good to even pay $50 for this place.”

But the condition of the student rental is not the only problem.

“I’ve seen people living eight to 10 people in three rooms and just one bathroom,” said Mudgil, who lives with five other people in a student rental. They all share a bathroom.

To address these concerns and alleviate problems around student housing, local developers along with the City of Windsor’s heritage planners are bringing a new student housing plan to Sandwich Town. The project will build around the Barrel House on Sandwich Street, giving more than 300 students a place that is exclusively designed for them.

The current plan is a rework of an initial design with the help of the city. They went through more than 12 iterations to get a plan that was recently presented to the public, at an open house on Feb.13 at Mackenzie Hall. The developers were asking for feedback and suggestions from the people who are living in Sandwich

Town.

The project will also attend to some critical issues in the area.

“A lot of the student housing facilities or fillings, people are renting out large homes in a room here in the room there and they’re not really designed for that purpose,” said Jerry Udell, lawyer for the project.

But according Caroline Taylor, a Sandwich Town resident, the project goes beyond housing students and can also help the community.

Taylor said that this student housing plan can ease homelessness in a way.

“It will take the students out of our single-family residential homes, which are now being bought up and used for students and displacing our own young local family,” said Taylor. “It is not fair to the to the neighborhoods nor to the students themselves.”

The city must still rezone the land. But the developers are hopeful that this project, when approved, will set an example for other businesses in the area.

“We hope that this project will be a bit of a catalyst project for the rest of the sandwich and focus on what can happen here,” said Anthony Gyemi, an architect involved in the project.

People gave small suggestions regarding where the benches should face and a better design for the windows and so “it’s 95 per cent there,” said Udell. “The main concern is to try to keep it as part of the community and make sure the development doesn’t look like it’s sort of stuck in the middle of nowhere, and I think we’re pretty well there.”

But Mudgil said that students might be more concerned about the rent.

“We will go further from the college to get to pay less and live,” said Mudgil.

According to the developers, if everything goes well, the construction will begin by the spring of this year. The student housing will be able to accommodate its first residents by Winter 2022.