Portrait of Melissa Reid

Candidate for Kingston City Council — King's Town, District 11

Melissa Reid

Rooted in Kingston. Working for District 11.

Kingston keeps asking you to pay more for the same city. Higher taxes, higher rent, higher water bills — and nothing that feels better on your street.

I'm running because I think we've got that backwards. Before we ask you for another dollar, we should make what Kingston already owns work harder. The pipes are in the ground. The land is already serviced. The buildings are already standing. Use them properly and this city gets cheaper to run, not more expensive.

This is the way of deciding things, and I'd apply it to every vote and every questions.

See where I stand

  • Three nights a week. Four hours a night. Through last February at −18°C.
  • 38 volunteers who show up when I ask.
  • 175 check-ins a month, logged — because if you don't write it down, it didn't happen.
  • 25 to 35 people a month connected to services that already existed.
  • Kingston Food Rescue: food that was going in a bin, going to a table instead.
  • Five generations in this city. Same street, most of them.

What I'd do

  • Affordability and responsible growth

    Kingston charges $14,652 for every new detached house — water, sewer, stormwater. A one-bedroom apartment: $6,709. Same city, less than half the price. Build where the pipes already are.

  • Housing people can actually afford

    There are empty bedrooms across this city, people on waitlists, and people sleeping outside. Building takes a decade. Matching people to homes that already exist can really start now and I have started it.

  • Who answers for your water bill

    In June, Council endorsed moving water and wastewater into a separate corporation whose board — not Council — would approve the budgets. It isn't built yet. I'd have voted no.

  • Safety and what happens after September 30

    The consumption and treatment service on Montreal Street closes September 30. I've worked that block for years. I know what happens next (and it is not pretty) if nobody plans for it.

  • Food and community resilience

    Kingston declared a food emergency in January 2025. I'd already been working on it. Food exists. Need exists. The connection is broken and it's fixable.

  • Heritage and who we are

    Kingston should be able to tell its whole history — the founding and the harm — without hiding it or sanitizing it.

There are empty bedrooms in this city and people sleeping in cars

Not enough housing gets built. That's true. It's also going to stay true for years, and you need somewhere to live before then.

Here's what's already sitting there: a widow in a four-bedroom house she can't heat. A senior on CPP with two empty rooms and a property tax bill she's watching climb. A single parent paying $1,800 for a one-bedroom.

Put those people together carefully — matched properly, with agreements that protect everyone and set expectations — and they're housed today, without pouring a single foundation. Building fixes the shortage over a decade. Matching houses people now.

I've been helping build Good Neighbours Co-Housing to do exactly that. The proof came first: one shared household — mixed incomes, residents on ODSP and CPP — running for over six years. The working model exists: HomeMADE, home-sharing for senior women, a legally incorporated nonprofit already operating in Ontario and extending into Kingston. GNCH is being formed to bring it together here — covenant housing, shared housing, home-sharing.

Where it actually stands: GNCH is in formation. Intake isn't open yet. The targets we've published — 20 to 30 per cent below market, 80 per cent retention — are what we're holding ourselves to, not results we've delivered. You've probably been promised housing before but I am actually building the programs before being elected.

What a council seat changes is speed. Zoning that permits it. City land that could host it. A housing strategy that counts it. Those are Council decisions, and right now they're not being made.

Who I am

I'm a systems architect. It's what I do. I find the gap between a service that exists and the person who needs it, and I build the thing that closes the gap.

I founded POET, Kingston's peer outreach team. I co-founded Kingston Food Rescue. I've been doing the unglamorous operational work in this district for years — the logging, the protocols, the shift schedules, the cold nights — and I know exactly where this city's systems break, because I've been standing in the break.

I also know what it costs to come back from the bottom, because I did.

My story

Rooted in Kingston

If you have the capacity to build, you have the duty to maintain.

Five generations in this city. Shipwrights who came for the harbour. A great-grandmother who built French cultural life in Kingston when there was none to join.

That line is the standard I was raised on. It's also, as it happens, exactly what I think is wrong with how Kingston is growing.

Voting is easier than you think

You can vote online from October 14 to 26. It takes about four minutes and you don't have to go anywhere.