A custom housing software in development for more than a decade and costing more than $2.6 million has only been partially rolled out in two of the eight Ontario municipalities that pushed for it, while one municipality has completely dropped out of the project.
Following an inquiry by local media, city staff in London, Ont., are providing more details about the fledgling project and planning to provide regular updates going forward — London city council last received a project update in February 2015.
The province downloaded responsibility for administering and funding most social housing, or community housing, in 2000 and in 2011, expanded the responsibilities and powers of municipal service managers under the Housing Services Act.
The idea for the custom software project began in December 2011 with London taking the lead to form a consortium of service managers with Windsor, Hamilton, Waterloo, Chatham-Kent, York, Halton and Ottawa, dubbed the Housing Collaborative Initiative (HCI).
The project was confirmed in 2014 when the regions’ service managers “signed an agreement to design, procure, develop and implement housing software to move from local Excel-based and paper-based tracking systems to one that consolidates the business information related to waitlists, rent supplement and housing providers in a consistent format,” London’s new director of municipal housing development Matt Feldberg explained.
In the ensuing decade, Hamilton and Waterloo have partially rolled out the software while York has exited the consortium entirely.
London currently has “a version” of the software and is “undertaking preliminary assessment prior to embarking on a full testing plan,” city staff said.
“(Hamilton and Waterloo) have actually offered to help us with some of the findings they’ve had, lessons learned, and what they’ve implemented,” Feldberg said Tuesday.
“If we’re able to implement faster, that would absolutely be an intention.”
The project has cost $2,605,224 so far, with London contributing $361,750 of that total.
The City of Hamilton’s Housing Services Division told Global News it is responsible for 18.8 per cent of the total cost, which works out to just under $500,000. The cost-sharing formula is based “on its proportionate amount of social housing units to those of the other municipalities.”
The project appeared to have been all but forgotten in the public eye until April 2023 when CBC London “contacted the Municipal Housing Development team inquiring about the project and the overall status,” staff said.
“This prompted the new leaders in the housing area to undertake a review on the status of the project.”
Among those new leaders is Feldberg.
“I started this this job in November of last year,” he told Global News on Wednesday.
“I can’t really speak to what happened before but, at this point, the intention is to tell council exactly what’s going on, let the public know and make sure that we have a path towards implementation.”
In the first update provided to London councillors since 2015, Feldberg suggested to the Community and Protectives Services Committee on Tuesday that decision-making was largely left to the governance group, of which London and Halton act as co-chairs.
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“All of the procurement was undertaken with the guidance and oversight of the HCI governance group, including the selection of software vendor and project coordinator.”
He also described the project as having “a long history in a changing regulatory environment.”
Feldberg later explained to Global News that there have been a number of changes to the Housing Services Act since the project began in earnest in 2014, in addition to extensive organizational changes at the City of London and London and Middlesex Community Housing, a corporation that currently manages roughly 3,000 units on behalf of the city.
In 2019, the city council at the time approved a governance overhaul of LMCH and the Housing Development Corporation after an independent review highlighted several issues including a lack of governance oversight and communication issues between the agencies and the city.
“That’s the local context. If you layer that on to the seven other municipalities that are part of that, yes, they’re all subject to the same Housing Services Act, but they (also) have their own organizational changes and their own local councils that are changing.”
According to the report from London city staff, Ottawa took the lead on a procurement process and BSA Consulting was hired in February 2015. A month later, Arcori was hired as the software developer.
Ottawa, Halton and Windsor all hired full-time positions “to support the development of the new software,” in 2017, London city staff said. At that time, LMCH was handling communications with the consultant for the city.
From 2017 to 2019, the governance group met monthly and “a series of working groups were established” to provide specific guidance on the software’s rent supplement, waitlist, finance and risk management modules.
In January 2021, Waterloo was the first to begin rolling out the software, dubbed the Integrated Housing System (IHS), beginning with the waiting list module, director of housing Ryan Pettipiere told Global News.
“The system allows us to manage waiting lists for the various housing sites or programs and offer units or program funding to prioritized applicants when units or funding is available. It also generates reports that allow us to track waiting list-related data, trends and outcomes.”
Two other modules are currently in testing in Region of Waterloo.
The City of Hamilton’s housing services division told Global News that it began using the software in July 2021, also starting with the waitlist module.
“It replaced the antiquated legacy system and end-of-life server that were used to administer the social housing waitlist,” housing services explained over email, adding that the rent supplement and housing allowance modules are expected to be implemented by the end of the year.
Because of the phased-in approach, which allows for “system development, testing and training at each stage,” Hamilton’s housing division was unable to say when it expects IHS to be fully operational.
While Waterloo and Hamilton appear to have found some success with IHS, York left the consortium entirely in May 2022. London city staff reported it is “unclear at this time” why they left but a “further review will be undertaken and reported to committee.”
York Region community and health services department commissioner Katherine Chislett told Global News that the municipality pulled out of the project due to “changes in project scope, significant delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and anticipated provincial legislative changes to the funding of housing providers.”
Chislett said York had contributed roughly $110,000 to the project and that “terminating the agreement resulted in loss of funds contributed.” She said York Region uses the property management software Yardi to house its rent supplement program and centralized waitlist.
City staff are now recommending the governance group provide more transparency on the status of the project and that local implementation aligns with London’s “technology and project management best practices.”
Feldberg told the committee Tuesday that city staff will also “undertake an accounting of every payment that was made by the city to date” and investigate the pros and cons of continuing the relationship with LMCH and the HCI.
“And we’ll do an assessment of the software in the various modules for use here in London, and that’ll be focused on the business, not from an IT perspective,” said Feldberg.
“Once that’s complete, we’ll work with our IT folks to bring forward a technology and project management plan.”
London city staff is expected to report back to the committee late this summer.
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