Implementing affordable housing legislation worries York Region experts

Yorkregion.com
By Lisa Queen
Dec. 12, 2016

They’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.

While York Region anti-poverty experts are applauding new provincial legislation aimed at increasing affordable housing, they say more economical housing prices and rents will depend on how enthusiastically municipalities embrace the law.

“The devil will be in the details,” Lee Webb, a lawyer specializing in housing issues at Richmond Hill’s Community Legal Clinic of York Region, said.

“Overall, the legislation is positive but it will really depend on how municipalities take it up before we can know how positive.”

The legislation is unlikely to reduce housing prices and rents in York’s hot market but could increasing stock and hopefully slow skyrocketing increases, Webb said.

“Right now, York Region is in an affordable housing supply crisis,” he said.

“I think that’s what the province is trying to do here with this provision, how do we grow the supply of housing so there’s less price pressure on homes. Whether this will bring down the cost of homes, I’m skeptical but it could slow the increase in cost.”

Last week, the provincial government adopted the Promoting Affordable Housing Act, which amends four existing acts.

The new legislation gives municipalities the option to implement inclusionary zoning, which requires affordable housing to be included in new residential developments.

It also makes secondary suites, such as basement apartments and units above garages, less costly to build by exempting them from development charges.

In addition, it encourages more inclusive communities by creating more mixed-income housing and strengthens tenants’ rights by preventing unnecessary evictions from social housing.

Webb and Mary Ann Proulx, executive director of the Housing Help Centre, which will close this month when York Region ends its funding, support the provincial legislation.

“I think anything that is going to create more realistic affordable housing is a good idea,” Proulx said.

But with the average cost of a newly built home in the region closing in on $1 million, Proulx isn’t holding her breath that the region’s affordable housing crisis will be alleviated any time soon.

Municipalities already could have implemented measures, such as allowing basement apartments, but many, including Richmond Hill, Markham, Vaughan and King, don’t allow them, she said.

“I don’t think municipalities will jump very quickly to (embrace the new provincial legislation). Do I think they need to? Absolutely,” she said.

“The waiting list (for subsidized housing) only continues to grow. The demand for housing continues to grow. The demand for rental housing continues to grow.”

York has a rental vacancy rate half the three per cent needed to for a healthy rental market, Webb said.

Rents are going up by more than seven per cent a year, often driving tenants to leave the region altogether, he said.

The province’s promotion of secondary suites will hopefully compel resistant municipalities to stop dragging their feet, Webb said.

Legislation that came into effect in 2012 required municipalities to adopt policies allowing basement apartments by 2017, but many towns and cities have resisted doing so, Webb said.

The province needs to update its rent control legislation, he added.