Barrie’s policy toolbox: stimulating affordable housing

NRU
Dec. 2, 2015
By Leah Wong

Building on its affordable housing strategy, the City of Barrie is considering what tools will encourage a more diverse range of housing types distributed across the city.

On Monday Barrie general committee approved, in principle, an action plan that seeks to address the spectrum of housing needs in the city. The recommendations were made by the city’s Built Form Taskforce - comprising builders, planners, architects, lawyers and community stakeholders - which was formed to highlight the policies the city could make to encourage the construction of affordable housing.

Addressing the shortage of affordable housing options has been a priority for council this term. In February council adopted an affordable housing strategy, which recommended the formation of the taskforce. Mayor Jeff Lehman told NRU he sees the challenge in Barrie being the lack of supply rather than a greater demand than other municipalities.

“We have had almost no affordable rental housing built in the City of Barrie over the past 10 years,” said Lehman. “What tends to be built is at the very high end of the market.”

Formed in the spring, the taskforce was asked to highlight which policies were acting as a barrier to the construction of affordable housing and to recommend new policies that could incentivize construction.

“We know we have some zoning policies that we know are getting in the way,” said Lehman. Following the release of the report he said the city will develop new polices that will eliminate some of the barriers to construction.

The city retained consulting firm SOLUTIONS Ink to facilitate discussions with the taskforce. The taskforce’s report addresses the need for options along the housing continuum, which ranges from emergency shelters to affordable ownership units. It recommended policies that could be applied to each housing form, organized around process, development approvals, partnerships, incentives and built form.

“People that require affordable housing don’t just fit into one type of housing,” SOLUTIONS Ink associate Lynn Strachan told general committee at its meeting Monday. She added that the city will need to explore a range of housing types - including individual single-family homes, innovative townhouse designs and cluster housing - to meet the range of needs.

“One of the [taskforce’s] recommendations is to carry on to further investigate these specific built form types and how we would have to amend the current zoning by-law to accommodate these types of housing and make recommendations for where these types of housing would work best.”

Some of the development approval policies the taskforce recommended include increasing density allowances to stimulate production of affordable units, reducing lot size and minimum setback standards and reducing parking and parkland dedication requirements.

Minimum setback standards and parking requirements impact how much land is required to build affordable housing.

For example, Lehman said a townhouse development with tandem parking and smaller setbacks requires far less land than one that requires larger setbacks and the traditional 1.5 spots/unit parking ratio.

“Those kinds of policies can have a real dollar impact on the bottom line. A $200,000 unit can become a $300,000 unit because of the price of land, and the price of land is driven in part by those requirements,” said Lehman. “If we can bring that piece of the equation down, perhaps the unit becomes more affordable.

The taskforce report says another factor that impacts the cost of units is time.

“We heard very clearly through our interviews that, ‘time is money’ and we need to accelerate some of these processes so that developers can get their shovels in the ground and have projects ready to go,” said Strachan. “That will help to reduce the cost [of construction,] which will then reduce the cost that is translated to the renter or the owner.”

SOLUTIONS Ink president and chief creative officer William Moore told committee that the taskforce recommends the city create an affordable housing navigator position within the planning department to streamline the process of attaining affordable housing. He said that the creation of this position could expedite development approvals for affordable housing projects.

Through the taskforce recommendations the city is seeking to encourage the distribution of housing types across the city and avoid concentrating affordable housing in one area.

“The level of change that we’re talking about to make a big difference in affordable housing is not wholesale change within communities. We have not had, for example, a 1,000unit project,” said Lehman. “We’re doing this in a distributive manner.”