Huron County will forgive over $65,000 in bad debts to its Housing Corporation.
Council approved the motion this week, an annual process for the County, although the total arrears for the period of July 2024 to June 2025 were greater than staff had budgeted for.
The County will write-off $65,629.42 in debt, a nearly $25,000 increase over the previous year.
A report brought by Housing Services showed that the debt owed to the County by former tenants, while varying year to year, has gone up since the pandemic.
Housing Services Manager Jayme Koskamp said there's a number of reasons for that.
"Our tenancies are becoming far more complex," she told council. "Our community partners that support our tenants are spread pretty thin already, trying to accommodate their ever-increasing case loads... We're finding that some of our tenants are quite unwell, when they're leaving they're leaving damaged units or leaving lots of possessions."
Council members asked if there was every any success in collecting these debts through an agency, and Koskamp said rarely. She noted that there were consequences for these amounts owed, as a former tenant owing arrears to any social housing provider in Ontario is ineligible to be on the waitlist of any social housing provider in the province until the debt is paid.
Koskamp also pointed to delays at Tribunals Ontario as part of the problem.
"I will say the ongoing delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board, that's just compounding arrears year over year and it's just getting greater and greater we find," she said.
Members approved a motion by Councillor Leah Noel to send a letter asking for more work to be done to move files through the Ontario Tribunals.
