Affordable housing goal still faces real barriers

In December, Ontario passed the Promoting Affordable Housing Act. It amends five pieces of legislation and presents new tools and rules primarily designed to increase the supply of affordable housing. The Act follows on the work of the Expert Advisory Panel on Homelessness in 2015 and the 2016 Ontario budget in which $178 million was allocated to implement the Long-Term Affordable Housing Strategy. There are four areas of change that could have a real impact in communities such as ours where the need for affordable housing is an ongoing concern.

The first is the option for the city to adopt “inclusionary zoning” which would require affordable housing units to be included in new residential developments. You want to build a new subdivision or condo building? You will need to make a portion of the units available at below market prices, either on site or off site, and there will be no appeal of the municipality’s inclusionary policies to the Ontario Municipal Board. The idea is to increase the supply of affordable housing units, reduce the cultural segregation associated with low income developments and create more mixed income neighbourhoods.

Last March, I wrote in this space about the use of this practice in the United Kingdom and in more than 500 municipalities in the United States. Proposed provincial regulations setting out the details of inclusionary zoning are to be released this spring and city staff can be expected to report to city council on the practice later this year. It should be adopted in Peterborough.

The goal of reducing income-based segregation is furthered by a second change. A tenant in a rent-geared-toincome social housing unit, whose financial situation improves to the point that he or she is no longer eligible for financial assistance, would no longer be summarily evicted. If the tenant pays market rent for a year or more, they will be able to stay in their unit, helping to create a more mixed income neighbourhood in the process.

The third change is the promotion of the creation of so-called secondary suites – smaller housing units such as above-garage or basement apartments – by making them less costly to build.

While these suites can be a source of new affordable rental housing and a means for homeowners to earn income from their property, they may meet with opposition from single family neighbourhoods who see rental tenancies as a threat to their property values and the character of their streets. New secondary suites are to be exempt from the city’s normal development charges. Neither the city nor the county will be pleased with a provincial program that results in a loss of municipal revenue. A better approach would have been a provincial exemption from its own Harmonized Sales Tax on materials and labour used to create a secondary suite, as well as provincial tax benefits or credits for completed and occupied projects.

Fourth, the city will be required by the province to conduct a local enumeration of the homeless. Last spring, as part of the federal Homelessness Partnership Strategy, a local team led by the United Way conducted such an enumeration and found 120 homeless people on the streets and in the emergency shelters of Peterborough on a given night.

The overlap and redundancy of federal and now provincial homelessness surveys – and the consequent costs to the city – is something that needs to be sorted out. So too is the fundamental question of the practical application of the data. It is one thing to count and another thing to act. We should not permit the former to be a camouflage for the latter.