Mississauga builds a housing strategy - no room for the middle

NRU
May 31, 2017
By Sarah Niedoba

In a city with skyrocketing housing prices and a shortage of affordable property, Mississauga’s middle earners are being left behind.

Mississauga has determined that the average middle-income resident-whose annual income falls between $55,000 and $100,000-can only afford to spend $289,012 on purchasing or $1,275/month on renting a home in the city. Meanwhile, the average cost of a home in Mississauga is $800,000 and rental vacancy sits at 1.4 per cent. That means that one in three middle-income households are struggling to afford their housing.

In response, staff has drafted a housing strategy with 40 actions meant to incentivize the development of affordable rental units. It includes an annual target-35 per cent of all units must be affordable to the city’s middle-income households- and encourages Peel Region to develop an inclusionary zoning incentive program for housing developers.

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from experts about [the incentive program], so we’re feeling positive about it,” Mississauga policy planning director Andrew Whittemore told NRU.

Participating in the city’s housing strategy forum last week at University of Toronto Mississauga was economist and Portland-based author of “The Economics of Inclusionary Zoning” Michael Wilkerson. He spoke about Portland’s use of inclusionary zoning to obtain affordable units as a proportion of every development. While there are no guarantees, he said that if it is implemented in a flexible way it can mean more affordable units get built.

“If you implement it, you’re going to get a higher likelihood of unintended outcomes,” said Wilkerson. “In economic-speak, that means success.”

The plan also calls for senior levels of government to consider taxation policies and credits to incentivize the development of affordable housing. Whittemore says that he’s encouraged by their initial response.

“As we were developing the strategy, the province and the federal governments both reached out to us, and we presented our strategy to them,” he says. “The province asked us to do a special presentation on some of the policies. So there’s already a level of partnership at work, and there seems to be a willingness to listen.”

When it comes to federal involvement, Spadina-Fort York MP and former Toronto councillor Adam Vaughan says the dialogue has to focus on implementation. While the federal government has committed about $50-billion to affordable housing Canada-wide over the next 11 years, what needs to be determined are the practicalities of how it will be spent.

Council will consider the draft housing strategy later this spring.