An affordable housing project led by the Edmonton Pride Seniors Group and Right at Home Housing Society now has land and nearly $9 million in provincial funding to build a safe, inclusive development in The Quarters.
“In a perfect world, it would come out of the ground sometime next summer,” said Marisa Redmond, executive director of Right at Home. “But we’re still early enough in the phases of this project that it’s hard to tell. We’re at the phase now where we can check that box and say this is probably very much going to be a reality. A year ago, we may have still been sitting on the precipice of, ‘Is this ever going to happen?'”
While Redmond describes this chapter as an early one, the seniors group has been dreaming of a development since 2013. The current plan is to build around 64 units with a mix of market- and non-market price points. The City of Edmonton provided the land at 95 Street north of Rowland Road for $1 in late 2025, while the provincial government approved $8.69 million in May.
Right at Home has enlisted Global Philanthropic for a capital campaign to help raise $5 million towards an estimated total project cost of $27 million; public funders and loans are expected to make up the balance. Though the momentum is happening about 13 years into the project, Redmond said there’s never a straight path between idea and execution in this realm.
“My personal opinion is that there is no normal timeline when it comes to building affordable housing,” Redmond told Taproot. “There are so many different components that can play into it — the finding of the land, the finding of partners, if you need them, the funding environment. Right now, we’re in an amazing funding environment, but in 2014 or 2013, those funds probably wouldn’t have been available.”
Part of Redmond’s positivity for the funding environment is related to the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, of which the City of Edmonton stewards nearly $200 million. However, it’s an indirect boon.
“I think the impact of the Housing Accelerator Fund is not targeted to make specific projects move forward,” she said. “It’s more targeted at changing that environment that makes projects move forward, such as approaches to zoning … it’s kind of changing those things that makes all housing move forward more quickly, whether it’s affordable, whether it’s market, small infill, big infill.”
The project is important because 2SLGBTQ+ seniors don’t always feel welcome at existing housing options for their retirement years, said Michael Phair, chair of the Edmonton Pride Seniors Group.
“(Myself and) a couple of gay and lesbian friends of mine who also had gotten older realized that we didn’t see very much, looking ahead, that addressed persons who were part of our community,” Phair told Taproot. “That kind of drove us. After we started looking at that notion and finding out what organizations were already doing … there was basically very little.”