Teams come up with 'blueprint' to tackle York Region's rental crisis

 

Yorkregion.com
July 11, 2017
By Lisa Queen

You’ve decided to turn your basement into apartment.

 

With the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. pegging York Region’s rental vacancy rate at 1.5 per cent, meaning there is only one and a half apartments available to be rented for every 100 rental units in the region, there’s a wide pool of potential tenants out there.

 

Now comes the hard part.

 

Getting the permits, doing the construction, ensuring it conforms to the building code and facing a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars.

 

But there could soon be another option.

 

Part of an ongoing challenge to brainstorm practical solutions to the region’s affordable housing crisis, a York Region team has come up with an idea for a modular apartment kit.

 

For less than $30,000, the kit would create a studio apartment in someone’s garage with minimal on-site work, said team member Dan Johnstone, adding his team is now working to bring the vision to reality.

 

Made with prefab walls that bolt together, the apartment would meet building codes and could be removed if a homeowner wanted to revert the space back to a garage, the Oak Ridges resident said.

 

It would have to be hooked up to a house’s plumbing and electrical systems.

 

If the unit rented for $1,000 a month, it would pay for itself in two and a half years, significantly less time than creating a basement apartment built to code, Johnstone said.