Federal funding aims to speed up housing process in St. John’s
“While we’re not physically building housing units, it’s become clear that there are some key areas where local governments can have an impact.” Danny Breen St. John’s mayor
“Wait and see” was the response from federal Minister of Labour and Seniors and Member of Parliament for St. John’s South-mount Pearl Seamus O’regan when he was asked whether the federal government has any plans to divest itself of over 26 acres of land in Pleasantville that was slated to be sold for housing more than a decade ago.
“We’re looking at it. We’re looking at everything,” O’regan said. “I mean, this announcement particularly is the announcement on how we can work with the City of St. John’s to let them do a faster, quicker and more substantive job creating new housing, but we’ve got other things that we’re going to be doing in the weeks and months ahead. Wait and see, watch that space.”
The Pleasantville master plan was unveiled in 2008 as a way to deal with the surplus land the federal government had acquired in the neighbourhood, and was slated for about 960 residential units and two 10-storey towers that would be built along Logy Bay Road.
According to the website of the Canada Lands Agency — a federal department that deals with surplus land — Phase 1, the eastern portion of the site, has “new services and roads installed, and several development blocks have been constructed, including affordable housing projects which created a little over 100 units. One development block remains to be sold and its sale is under negotiation.”
When contacted by Saltwire about the plan, Canada Lands said Phase 2, which is approximately 26.5 acres of land, is expected to proceed in mid 2024 and they will be exploring the possibility of additional affordable housing projects on the site.
SPEED UP DEVELOPMENT
The announcement O’regan was referring to is $10.4 million in funding being provided to the City of St. John’s over the next three years from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund to help the city streamline and speed up the housing development process.
Specifically, the money is going to be used for:
• Incentives to build multi-unit homes;
• Creating an electronic permitting system;
• Reduction in property taxes for multi-unit buildings that contain affordable housing;
• City and province working together to rewrite zoning rules and make it clear where developers can and should be building affordable housing;
• Changing the zoning laws to let people build backyard units;
• The city will automatically permit four units to be built in a single;
• Helping turn over city-owned land for housing.
St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen said it took a group effort to get to this point, but “everyone recognizes the issues at hand and recognizes that we have a role to play in the solution.”
“While we’re not physically building housing units, it’s become clear that there are some key areas where local governments can have an impact,” Breen said. “This funding allows us to maximize this impact by supporting various new incentives and process improvements that will encourage the development of housing and support densification in key areas of our city.”
Breen said they will be looking at improving capacity and internal processes to help eliminate some of the barriers facing developers who want to develop housing, and this funding will help with that.
SKEPTICAL OF COMMENTS
Conservative Party of Canada Leader Pierre Poilievre is in the province and, speaking with reporters on March 13, made comments about withholding federal infrastructure funding to municipalities that don’t permit 15 per cent more home building in their communities. Across Canada, “local bureaucracies block home building,” Poilievre said.
“We’re giving them $5 billion a year in federal money,” he said. “What do they do with it? They build up their bureaucracies. They add more and more bureaucracy. It takes seven years to get permits and zoning changes. All that money goes on the homebuyer or comes off your paycheque because the builder is not going to pay it.”
When asked by Saltwire about those comments, Breen said the approach seems counterintuitive.
“Much of the money that we use in federal cost-sharing arrangements is to build infrastructure that’s required for housing,” he said. “So, if you’re looking at wastewater treatment plants, for example, if they were to do that, then they would actually stall housing even more. I think Pierre Poilievre probably needs to talk to municipalities, because he’s not getting very good information if he’s making these comments.”