Housing Corporation a Success

I am one of four private-citizen members of the PEC Affordable Housing Corporation. I joined the Board in December 2025. I have 30 years of experience as an architect and land developer and am volunteering my professional skills and knowledge to help improve housing options in this community.

The last 7 months have been a period of great progress on PECAHC’s Disraeli Street project. This activity has unfortunately generated criticism and fear-mongering in local media, on social media and on Council, mostly due to a lack of understanding of the development process.

When the majority of the population think about development, what they actually imagine is construction activity — the process of development is mostly unseen. A person will walk by an empty lot for years and then one day see a construction truck on-site and think, “oh, they finally started.” In fact, that day is the end point of a long development process.

Despite claims that PECAHC has made no progress on affordable housing, the reality is that the Disreali Project has recently passed many quiet, but crucial, milestones:

The Board completed environmental certification of the land, enabling residential uses on the former institutional parcel.

A detailed open call for Proposals (RFP), seeking private development partners, was issued and successfully awarded.

A proven modular developer was chosen based on a high-quality design, a well-below budget construction estimate, and an expedited construction schedule.

The Board negotiated a fixed-price construction contract, ensuring no cost increases through construction, with a commitment to use local County labour and regionally sourced material suppliers.

With a construction contract and budget in hand, the Board then prepared a business plan (proforma) in consultation with professional appraisers and lenders which balanced anticipated operating costs, vacancy rates and capital reserve requirements with expected revenues.

The strength of the executed construction contract, the final building design and the business plan enabled the Board to secure a financing commitment worth 90 percent of the project’s value from a Class A lender – proof of this Board’s and this Project’s bona fides.

Building affordable and rental housing is an extremely difficult process. The Board is currently pursuing funding for the remaining 10 percent of costs through private, provincial and federal avenues. Having community support is an important factor that these types of funders look for when committing the funding crucial to our success.

If you believe that housing costs are too high, that young adults and fixed-income seniors shouldn’t have to leave the County to find housing, that teachers, nurses, agricultural, and hospitality workers deserve to be able to live in the community where they work, then you believe in affordable housing.

If you do, please talk to your friends and neighbours about how important affordable housing is to everyone in our community and encourage your local Councillor, MP, MPP and media outlet to believe in it too.

Hillary Spriggs, Member of the PECAHC Board, Picton  

Delhi Deserves Protection

Delhi Park, a historic, eco-diverse green refuge situated on ancestral Indigenous land in the heart of Picton is at this very moment being violated by the wants of a few athletically-challenged folks looking to toss pickleballs at each other, at great expense to all Picton/PEC taxpayers and our natural environment.  

The Pickleball Infrastructure Project (PIP) will be intrusive and costly, requiring sewers, pipes, water, and wiring for washrooms and showers for pickleballers. Plans propose paving over enough land for six courts in the centre of Delhi Park. 

The project will threaten and ultimately, over time, destroy the already barely “protected” but always threatened natural swampy breeding habitats of rare turtles, frogs and birds along with the natural green integrity of the Park and the reason it was created.   

Our threatened, eco-sensitive habitats cannot exist in areas infiltrated with human infrastructure, especially the kind requiring constant maintenance. During the wintery half of the year it cannot be used and will attract unnecessary loitering at all hours for unintended purposes, making the entire park less safe for children.  

Given that there are already several other pickleball locations in and around Picton, including at Base31, where four underused courts are already waiting to provide a few hours of light-weight athletics, why does Shire Hall need to destroy what remains of Picton’s last and largest, precious in-town natural green space for yet more of these courts? 

Let your ward councillor know of your objection to this costly and totally unnecessary pickleball project in Delhi Park.

W.E. Hildreth, Picton