Niagara Falls to review housing strategy
Plan not ‘jibing with what reality is’ when it comes to affordability, Coun. Lori Lococo says
It’s time Niagara Falls reviews its housing strategy, which is “not jiving with what reality is” when it comes to affordability, says Coun. Lori Lococo.
During its meeting last week, city council approved Lococo’s motion that council review its housing strategy for education, information and discussion purposes.
“Almost every development application that comes before us, we make comments about the affordability, affordable housing rate, attainable rate,” she said.
“Is it realistic? Is it not? What is affordable? What is attainable? Are we approving developments that align with the 121-page report that was done back in June of 2021? I think that we need to revisit it and educate ourselves more and inform ourselves more.”
Lococo said 42.3 per cent of Niagara Falls’ population is 55 to 64 years old, an age group that requires “different housing than if it was a family.”
She said one-person households represent 25.9 per cent of those in Niagara Falls.
Almost half of households in the municipality — 49.3 per cent — make under $60,000, which is “much lower than the region and province,” said Lococo.
She said 47.4 per cent of rental households indicated they’re spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing.
“Singles spend 59 per cent of their income on housing. Affordable is supposed to be 30 per cent or less.”
Lococo said a recent housing report lists rent for a bachelor apartment at $643, a one-bedroom for $968, a two-bedroom for $1,098 and a three-bedroom for $1,145.
“It’s very difficult right now to find a one-bedroom for at least $1,200, so this was done in 2021. We’re three years beyond and a lot of things have changed,” she said.
“Home ownership is difficult or impossible for minimum-wage earners.”
Lococo said for income of up to $70,000 a year, an affordable house price would be $328,000, while households would require $119,000 in income to afford a home of $560,000.
“One- and two-person households in Niagara Falls are 63.1 per cent of our municipality, so it shows you the need. Some people have four-bedroom homes — they don’t need it,” she said.
“I know, through a lot of our meetings in the last little while, we’re talking about affordable housing and it’s not jibing with what reality is.”
Coun. Mona Patel said a municipality can have a housing strategy in place, but affordable housing developments can only happen “if we have developers coming through to develop those lands.”
Kira Dolch, the city’s general manager of planning, building and development, agreed, saying municipalities need “willing parties to do that.”
“We do have a policy in place to kind of encourage and ask them how they’re kind of meeting our threshold for affordability.”
“A lot of them are stepping up to the table, more at the moderate to high level. Once you start to get into the low and moderate level, it’s a little trickier. That’s where you see regional incentives come into play, not-for-profit housing because, again, the model is tougher to work with, making profit when you’re into that low to moderate just because of land cost, construction costs, all those things that they have to pay for.”