Last night the Foundation Capital team had the opportunity to attend a private event hosted by the Mayor of London. We spent time walking through our vision for workforce housing on the Wellington Bus Rapid Transit corridor. Four days from council. Here is what the conversation looked like.
PV, Mit & Jeff
Not a photo op. A real conversation about workforce housing on the Bus Rapid Transit corridor, the case for building well, and what a Foundation Capital development can do for the city over the next decade.
Last night the Foundation Capital team had the opportunity to attend a private event hosted by the Mayor of London. Four days out from our September 29 council application, sitting across from the person who leads the city we are building in, having a real conversation about what we do and why it matters for London. Not a photo op. A conversation. Here is a picture of the team from last night.
We walked the Mayor through what Foundation Capital is building on the Wellington Bus Rapid Transit corridor. 950 units of purpose built workforce rental. Priced to serve the London tenant who is currently getting priced out of the city, the shift worker at a London factory, the nurse on rotation at London Health Sciences, the tradesperson who commutes into the auto sector, the daycare staff, the shop supervisor. Not luxury. Not students. The working London resident who needs a clean, safe unit near transit at a rent they can actually afford.
We shared why the Bus Rapid Transit corridor matters. The province has invested roughly half a billion dollars into the corridor because they want purpose built rental density to justify the infrastructure spend. Our file is exactly that. Density oriented to transit, built for the workforce that London needs to retain, structured to close under CMHC MLI Select financing so that new supply actually gets built at rents Londoners can pay.
London has a workforce housing gap that is not going to be closed by the private luxury market on its own. Rents on new luxury towers do not work for the tenant London actually needs to retain. That leaves a specific band, roughly $980 to $1,300 monthly rent for a purpose built one or two bedroom near transit, that gets built by almost nobody in the current market unless the operator can stack CMHC MLI Select financing plus municipal and provincial partnership capital.
That is our specific lane. We do not build luxury. We do not build student housing. We build the workforce band that London depends on. And when that band gets housed properly, the whole city benefits. Employers retain staff. Families stay together. The tax base stays healthy. And the province's transit investment actually pays back its density thesis.
The framing we shared with the Mayor is that this is genuinely a three-way win. The city gets 950 units of purpose built rental at prices its workforce can afford, on land already zoned for density along the BRT corridor. The province gets the transit-oriented development that its half billion dollar BRT investment was designed to unlock, at scale, from a private operator that is not dependent on further government funding to break ground. And Foundation Capital and our investors get to build something the market needs, at a return the deal supports, with the alignment that comes from operating in a corridor where every level of government has already made its bet.
We are grateful the Mayor made time last night for the conversation. We were one of many groups he engaged with, and we appreciated the chance to walk him through the file directly.
The Wellington land assembly file goes to City of London council on Monday, September 29. Between now and then we will keep doing what we have been doing for months. Preparing the deputation. Answering questions from councillors' offices. Pressure testing the file for every scenario. Our approach on the vote itself has not changed and does not depend on any single councillor position. As we walked through in the Sept 1 and Sept 15 letters, we have underwrote to three ranked exits: council yes, settlement in the weeks following, or OLT approval as the backstop. The math works under all three.
What last night reinforced for us is that the operator conversations that happen outside the council chamber matter as much as the technical planning file inside it. Cities want to know who is behind the projects being built in them. Last night was our chance to introduce ourselves as an operator that is here for the long term, that has a specific product that fits a specific need, and that plans to keep building in Southern Ontario long after the September 29 file resolves one way or another.
950 Units · Wellington BRT Corridor · Workforce Rent
Targeted: 20% compounded annually (4 year hold)
The project we walked the Mayor through last night. 4 days to council. $100K minimum. Accredited investors, existing FC investors, or FF&BA exemption.
$10K Minimum · RRSP / TFSA / RESP / LIRA Eligible · Also Cash
Targeted: 15% Annualized (7% cash monthly + 8% appreciation)
The existing FCPRET portfolio already owns the workforce band we described to the Mayor. Same operator team. $10K entry.
Talk soon,
PV, Mit & Jeff
P.S. Building well is a long game, and cities take time to trust operators. Last night felt like a moment worth marking. Thank you to the Mayor and his office for hosting.
