While considering numerous efforts to increase housing affordability, with 30 potential action items including a vacant home tax or a renoviction bylaw, city council was repeatedly told to "be bold."
During a council meeting on Tuesday, council approved a bylaw amendment allowing four units be permitted on low density residential lots in the city, one more than the current three. It also approved its Housing Affordability Strategy as for what the city could look like in 10 years time when it comes it housing.
This was the kick-off of the strategy but many delegates who don’t fit the bill of some of what the strategy covered, kept bringing it back to deeply affordable housing. This is something under the County of Wellington’s purview.
The strategy is meant to allow more affordable housing to be built faster. It’s a 10-year strategy meant to be continually reviewed and changes can be made. It is also meant to be complimentary to the county’s 10-year housing and homelessness plan.
Part of creating more housing supply is being supported by a bylaw change to have four units on low density residential lots instead of the current three was recommended and approved by council.
The recommendation is within the federal direction on housing with the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) where Guelph would get $21.4 million. With the four units as of right being implemented, it could make the city eligible for more funding through the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund for projects for new housing supply.
There are 11,000 lots that could support four units without a bylaw change but if a change were made with the new bylaw an additional 3,150 lots could be added. This number can be contributed to reducing the parking by one required space, said Cushla Matthews, city development advisor, in her presentation.
The recommendation to have a zoning bylaw amendment to permit up to four units on low density residential lots along with two other recommendations and an amendment, were unanimously approved.
There is variety when it comes to the configuration of units. There could be a main house with up to three accessory dwelling units. Those units can be stacked, side-by-side or back-to-back.
With four units comes the issue of parking and in the scenario with a main house with three accessory dwellings the house can have parking, the first unit can’t but the remaining two can. Three parking spaces would be for fourplexes too.
There was a motion for an amendment to require one off-street parking space per dwelling unit, except for in the downtown, but it didn't pass.
"We have also heard our comparators, Waterloo, Kitchener, Hamilton, are all doing exactly what is being proposed here," said Mayor Cam Guthrie. "We are in a housing crisis, and I continue to hear people say it, but then when the options to actually unlock more housing are before us, we're not taking the stance to actually do it. We're not implementing those things that need to be done to try to bring about choice and affordability and more housing units to our city, and we would be losing out on over 3,000 potential units, choice for people to live somewhere."
Staff recommended the detached accessory dwellings be limited to 80 square metres in size and the number of bedrooms continues to no longer be regulated by the zoning bylaw but instead the building code.
The changes to the bylaw were supported by the two delegates who spoke to it.
For Junction Village Guelph (JVG) it was a long running joke; everything it envisioned for its community was illegal. It’s not.
In the Junction neighbourhood 45, 46 and 47 Meadowview Ave. are properties of the village. It has created the Junction Village Community Land Trust to make the space community-owned and affordable for everyone.
JVG co-founder Mary-Kate Craig appreciated the decrease in parking with the bylaw change and thinks cars shouldn't be the central consideration in Guelph, among other things in the change.
"Thanks for going in this direction. And keep being bold. We're not going to get there through increments. We're in a time of breakdown. We really are. We're in a time of global breakdown … and Guelph has always been a city that is bold and on the cutting edge of what is possible,” said Craig.
The increase of three units to four and the way those units are configured gives different options for people in different life stages.
“This bylaw embodies a balanced approach to growth, addressing urgent housing needs while respecting our community's values,” said Dillon Fraser, one of the directors of OnePoint Association of Realtors and former president of the Guelph and District Association of Realtors.
When it came to delegating about the HAF the vacant home tax came up by two delegates. These delegates wanted the tax to be a higher priority for council.
Delegate Susan Watson called the tax “low hanging fruit” and the city doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel since other municipalities already do it.
Stan Kozak shared a presentation of photos of 20 seemingly vacant homes people in the community submitted. If the tax were implemented it would pay for itself, said Kozak. He estimates there are between 100 to 200 vacant homes in the city if condos were included in it.
Delegations brought their personal experiences to council about how unaffordable housing is.
Affordable means something different to a variety of people. “For some, it can mean housing for people on social assistance. For others, it can mean housing that is owned by the government, or it can mean housing not built by the development industry,” said Matthews, in her presentation.
The provincial government set the affordable ownership in Guelph at $398,800 or less. As for affordable monthly rent prices are by type of unit so $1,160 or less for a bachelor unit, $1,508 or less for one bedroom, $1,646 for two bedrooms and $1,695 or less for three bedrooms.
Both the federal and provincial government definitions of affordable housing is if it costs less than 30 per cent of a household’s before tax income, but the province adds another measure – or the purchase price is at least 10 percent below the average purchase price of a resale unit in the area.
In the Guelph context low to moderate means $68,000 to $125,000 for home ownership. About 40 per cent of Guelph’s population falls under this.
For renters this looks like $46,000 to $83,000, a low to moderate household income. In both cases, this is what is focused on in the strategy.
What the city can’t do in increasing the housing supply is make developers build affordable housing and it can’t require them to build within a certain time frame.
“Throughout all of the engagement events we did hold, we consistently heard the same message, 'be bold,'” said Lucas Mollame, city planner, who presented on the strategy at the meeting. “For us, boldness means considering and implementing actions that push beyond what the city has done in the past to consider and determine how we can be a change-maker for affordable housing policy and development. We also have more actions in this strategy than ever before.”
Council heard from delegates who work in areas of housing affordability, attainable homeownership, non-profits like Mike Labbe, president and CEO of Home Opportunities, Ryan Deska, director of community engagement with Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, Morgan Dandie from LilyPad Communities and Dominica McPherson, director of Guelph and Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination.
Things like prioritizing the loss of affordable housing, leveraging tools from existing housing models, and bringing more attainable affordable homes to more people were said.
The housing affordability strategy was unanimously approved by council after it was amended to include Coun. Linda Busuttil’s motion to prioritize the protection of affordable housing by moving the action to track current stock to guide policy development (like a renoviction bylaw, vacant home tax or rental replacement bylaw) up to a high priority action. This includes a staff report back on this with a recommended approach and implementation schedule through the semi-annual housing update in March.
For Mike Ashkewe, he said he will never be a homeowner. He is a disability, poverty and Indigenous advocate in the city who doesn't see his community represented in the strategy.
He knows uncomfortable decisions will have to be made around housing. “But I’m asking you to do the bold decision and I’m asking you guys to be on the right side of history, to help people like myself. Help the disabled community find places where we feel safe, where we feel secure,” said Ashkewe.
Those with developmental disabilities need to be considered in the housing strategy, said Cora Pacheco, from the Guelph Wellington Family Network.
The network is made up of family members and unpaid caregivers who support people with developmental disabilities. Pacheco has a 26-year-old daughter with Down syndrome who was denied the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit, a program to help with rental costs in the province.
She asked council to include specific targets and funding allocations for deeply affordable housing for people with developmental disabilities.
“I want to stress that there is a great need here, aging parents and caregivers do not live forever,” said Pacheco. “We want to work with governments, community groups and service agencies to come up with real solutions so … that these adults with developmental disabilities have housing options they can access. We want to help them transition to a home of their own with roommates of their choosing before it gets to a crisis point.”
Guthrie pointed out, although some of the delegations were not related to what is in the strategy, it “speaks to the devastating housing issues that are so prevalent in the community.”
It is important for the community to come to council and to say they don’t want this to be ignored, he said. “And we're not … we're completely not. There's a role for us either in partnership, in investing and in advocating. We heard that big time tonight and advocating as well,” said Guthrie.
“It's both an administrative and political push. On all of those issues, but it really does go just to the heart of the matter of the dire, dire need of some of these housing types that are so desperately needed in our community,” he said.
