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By meadowlakeNOW staff

HAF Fund

Meadow Lake doesn’t qualify for HAF funding

Apr 3, 2025 | 3:25 PM

The hopes Meadow Lake had of having affordable housing through the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) is no longer – at least for the moment.

The initial request to the administration exploring the idea came from Councillor Connie Marsh-Yuhasz came in January, as a way to also address the housing shortage.

“The Housing Accelerator Fund is intended to drive transformational change within the sphere of control of the local government regarding land use planning and development approval,” read the January report in part.

Mayor Merlin Seymour said when the administration looked into the program requirements, they discovered it was, in fact, the HAF program is in its second round second known as the HAF 2.

“We actually didn’t apply for the first portion of it,” he said, noting due to that, they couldn’t qualify.

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“It was basically for information – really great idea, but we just kind of missed the cut off date and stuff like that from two years ago.”

The Pre-application Reference Material Guidebook detailed the reasons why and in January, the exploratory report laid out the criteria of who was eligible for the federal funding, including that a community had to have a population of less than 10,000, is a territory or an Indigenous government.

“To be eligible for the second round of HAF, applicants must have submitted an application under the first round and been declined for funding,” read the excerpt included in the council package from mid-March.

“This includes local governments within Canada, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit governments who have delegated authority over land use planning and development approvals.”

Seymour said it was something their councillor had come across while doing searches of grant money available. When asked if there might be opportunity to apply for the funding in the future, he said the guide didn’t have any directions on that score.

“It’ll all depend on funding available down the road,” he said.

“As you know and everyone else knows, it’ll all depend on what they come out with for promises.”

Communities who have been successful, have been able to put money towards affordable housing, community-related housing supports and action plans.

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