Housing Assessment confirms shortage of affordable housing, rental units and transit concerns

By Casandra Turnbull

Managing Editor

Some key themes are emerging from the county’s Housing Needs Assessment, primarily concerns about affordability, diversity in housing types/sizes, a lack of available rentals and accessibility barriers surrounding transit for seniors, young people, persons with disabilities and car-free residents. Brandon Kortleve, Manager of Policy and Planning provided a summary of the preliminary findings of Housing Needs Assessment project to the Administration and Operations committee on April 15th. “There’s lots of good data in this document,” said Kortleve, who made the presentation as information only and asked for approval that would allow staff to complete the engagement phase of the project and prepare a draft of the public facing Housing Needs Assessment report. The Housing Needs Assessment project was initially presented to council in January where council directed staff to start the project. The assessment is required for federal funding under the Canada Community-Building Fund and this project aligns with and supports the county’s Official Plan. The EngageBrant public survey closed on April 22nd. At the time of Kortleve’s presentation, over 250 people responded to the survey. “One interesting pieces of information that we’ve seen with our growth management stuff lately is our population is going up higher than we expected relative to our housing number so that is telling us there is more people living in the houses,” said Kortleve. To address concerns of affordability, diversity, availability and accessibility, staff have drafted some preliminary directions that support the objectives of the Official Plan and align with the strategic plan, said Kortleve, noting they are draft suggestions only and are open to discussion. The directives include developing incentive plans to encourage affordable and diverse housing through financial or regulatory incentives, supporting innovative housing models like tiny homes, co-housing, ARUs and multigenerational living, expand rental housing supply, improve infrastructure and transportation planning to compliment growth, update Official Plan and the Zoning by-law with housing targets that include modern standards and deliver a full range of housing needed for long-term growth and support future affordable housing models through more research and planning. Paris Coun. Steve Howes thanked Kortleve for summarizing the report, stating, “I would say you’ve verified what we’ve all had hunches about.” As we move ahead, how we incentivize more rentals is a bigger task that involves multi-levels of government, Howes commented. Paris Coun. John Bell said the timing of the assessment project seems a bit odd. Isn’t this something we should have done before our Official Plan? he asked. He also wondered if we learned anything new out of this assessment. “At this point we haven’t seen anything surprisingly new; we had the sense of these things but now we have the data, which is fundamental in the policy world as we move forward,” responded Kortleve. Bell also questioned, as the County continues to grow in Paris and St. George, how does that growth plan stack up against the housing assessment concerns identified in the project? Kortleve acknowledged there is a mismatch in the county’s current growth plan and changes will be required to address the concerns outlined in the project to avoid falling into the same pattern of building unaffordable homes that do not fit the need of the community. Mayor David Bailey suggested there should be more communication between staff and builders who plan to construct buildings with rental units to get a better idea of what rent costs would look like and whether they will be offering rentals versus condos, etc. Bailey said he believes there’s a disconnect between expectations and the outcome. “If we get notes that say the first two floors are going to be rentals and a one bedroom is $2,350 and two bedroom is $2,700, we haven’t fixed anything,” said Bailey. Administration and Operations Committee members voted unanimously to receive the information and direct staff to prepare a draft of the public facing Housing Needs Assessment report to be presented to council in the next couple of months.