Housing

A home for every resident

• Speed up the city housing strategy, the rapid affordable-housing programme and the villages and corridors plans
• Take a second look at the missing-middle housing initiative
• Set up a municipal land bank programme
• Plan and rebuild the older terrace housing lands
• Finish the comprehensive development plan for the main corridor
• Deliver the ten-year official community plan review
• Look at a time-limited property tax break for purpose-built rentals
• Reward purpose-built affordable and rental homes
• Reward schemes that keep tenants from being displaced
• Offer incentives for arts and cultural amenity space
• A small-scale housing ambassador
• Heritage allowances for energy retrofits and efficiency work
• Turn empty commercial floor space into homes
• Set requirements and rewards for spreading density around
• Loosen zoning for tiny homes and secondary suites
• Work with the province to speed up housing for unhoused neighbours

Whether homes exist, whether people can get into them, and whether they can afford to stay are the questions residents raise with us most often. Our city is not starting from nothing – the housing strategy, the rapid affordable-housing programme and the villages and corridors plans are all in place – but each of them can be sped up, simplified and built upon so that they deliver more with less friction. And we will take another look at the missing-middle initiative in the form it has now, and in whatever form it next takes.

There are routes to more housing that sit outside those strategies altogether.

A land bank is a public body or a non-profit set up to buy, hold, manage and sometimes redevelop property so that it can be returned to useful purposes that serve the community – more affordable housing, say, or steadier property values. Our city is a good candidate for one, because the supply of available land is small and the municipality has a legitimate interest in seeing what remains put to its best use. We would explore founding and funding a municipal land bank, building up the capital to buy sites for affordable housing alongside government and non-profit housing providers.

A handful of sites are ready for planning work now. The older terrace estate in the north ward is an unusual assembly of land that still supplies badly needed lower-cost homes, but its buildings are close to the end of their useful life. Rebuilding it with an eye to greater density would be a rare chance to add affordable housing right in the middle of the city.

The main corridor is ready for a comprehensive development plan of its own – open space, playgrounds, walking and cycling routes, affordable and middle housing, childcare, and the everyday amenities a household needs (grocers, cafes, a hardware shop) set alongside the light industry there now and in the future.

Tax holidays have already done good work as an incentive for heritage restoration, and that should carry on, but the same tool could be pointed at purpose-built rental, non-profit housing and co-operative housing. A five to ten year property tax holiday for owners of all three could be trialled. Pre-zoning and fee waivers reward purpose-built affordable and rental homes and hold down tenant displacement, and they can be tied to renter protections such as safeguards against renoviction, temporary accommodation and a first right of refusal.

Small-scale housing suits people whose needs have shrunk, or who simply want to live with less. Until the rules for such dwellings become routine, a ‘small-scale ambassador’ could coordinate and smooth the way for the people building them – garden suites, secondary suites, duplexes, tiny homes, prefabricated models, converted containers and the rest. A design competition could push innovation further, producing “off the shelf” small-home plans eligible for pre-approval where they match standard designs and zones, with prizes for the most sustainable and the most cost-effective.

Heritage protection has to continue if we want to keep the built record of the district’s past while still making room for the newer stories the city is writing. At the same time, the demands of environmental stewardship mean we should find ways to marry heritage restoration, renovation and protection with room for energy retrofits and efficiency work, including solar and wind installations on heritage structures.

With the commercial vacancy rate still climbing, there is a chance to turn that empty floor space into homes. The newer rules for affordable housing, which no longer require rezoning or a public hearing where a proposal already fits the official community plan and its design guidelines, could be extended to owners of existing commercial buildings who want to convert to mixed use, from commercial to commercial-residential. That would squeeze more out of the land we already have. Mixed-use buildings are nothing new here. This looks like the sensible next step, kept within limits so the city’s working commercial streets are not hollowed out.

Setting both requirements and rewards for distributed density, where housing types are spread right across the city, keeps any one neighbourhood from ending up with a single design or a single kind of home. It is what makes each neighbourhood distinct and varied. Rewarding developers who set aside room for the people who make art and culture starts to build the shared spaces that innovation districts need, where art, performance and creative work sit next to one another.

The city is not in the business of building homes for unhoused people directly, but it can work with other authorities, agencies and partners to raise funding for regional supportive housing and rent supplements, keep pressing the case for supportive housing spread across neighbourhoods, and urge senior governments to fund properly the health and social services that go with it.

By 2023 the official community plan will have been in force for a decade. That is the moment for an honest review of how far it has met the goals set for it at the start, and for revising those goals in light of how the city has changed and what its residents will need from housing next.