And the push continues for Barrie’s affordable housing strategy, but there’s plenty of pushback as well.
City councillors, sitting as affordability committee Wednesday night, heard an update on the unfinished strategy.
“I kind of wish I was here with one thing and say, 'Council, let’s do one thing and this is going to solve it.’ That’s not the case,” said Michelle Banfield, Barrie's director of development services. “We are here with some options for council to consider. We will be returning back to council before the end of the year.”
There’s no lack of measures the city can look at to solve the affordable housing crisis.
So-called 'action items' include: a comprehensive review of Barrie’s zoning bylaw; offering development incentives for targeted projects; prioritizing housing on public land; shortening approval timelines; creating funding specifically for affordable housing; connecting those who are interested in partnering to deliver new housing; participating in Simcoe County’s secondary-suites program; enacting a rental replacement bylaw to preserve existing rental stock; continuing to shift the public interchange of ideas around growth, density and affordable housing; and exploring the potential for inclusionary zoning in Barrie.
“There’s probably about five we are doing already,” Banfield said.
Councillors heard some stark opinions and numbers from N. Barry Lyon Consultants, which was hired to update the affordable housing strategy.
“We know from our work that new, affordable rental housing requires anywhere between $100,000 and $300,000 a door of subsidies,” said Josh MacLeod of Lyon. “And that doesn’t all necessarily have to come from the City of Barrie. There are funding programs from other levels of government that can be tapped into for that.
“The math is kind of ugly. It’s expensive,” he added.
“What jumped out for me … was 350 net new rental units added in the past 20 years,” Coun. Jim Harris said of Lyon’s report.
“On the surface, it looks like a massive failure,” said Coun. Craig Nixon. “I just want to remind everyone that 20 years ago it wasn’t such a big issue. It’s only in the last few years that it’s really become a crisis, so that number is a little misleading.”
Coun. Clare Riepma was struck by one line in the Lyon material.
“It says ‘there are next to no options in the market for low and moderate income households either in ownership or rental,'” he said. “That strikes me as being absolutely correct, but it also strikes me as being very problematic.”
“We’ve been waiting for about 30 years for the private market to start building affordable housing and they’re clearly not doing it,” said MacLeod. “Yes, more public funding will be required.”
Riepma wondered aloud where that money would come from.
“Because I don’t think that the taxpayer here really has a pocketful of money, either,” he added.
The Ward 1 councillor also noted Barrie’s Official Plan, which designates land use, has a target of 15 per cent affordable housing on new residential development, and a provision of cash-in-lieu if that target can’t be hit.
But it’s just a target.
“The Planning Act does not allow municipalities through their Official Plan to require affordable housing,” said Nick Michael of Lyon. “All communities will have targets for affordable housing in their Official Plan, and really the way we go about achieving the targets is through things like incentive programs, using public land, inclusionary zoning, these types of policies to help you hit your target.
“There’s no ability for municipalities to actually enforce that target without working with the private sector. It’s really an unfortunate circumstance," Michael added.
Coun. Sergio Morales said there are few options to improve Barrie’s affordable housing stock.
“You increase density or you increase subsidies,” he said. “And if we don’t want to increase subsidies, unless we get millions from the province and feds, then we’ve got to increase density.”
In addition to the action items, programs can be integrated into the affordable housing strategy.
Those include: investing budget surpluses into housing outcomes; exploring the potential for density bonuses; ensuring the city has data collection to support its decisions; encouraging non-traditional construction techniques, housing tenures and funding models; requiring housing in conjunction with new public and community facilities; declaring housing as a human right; advocating for the elimination or deferral of the HST on new rental developments; pushing for more streamlined access to funding and financing programs; calling for more revenue tools to reduce the burden on property taxpayers; asking the province to define attainable housing and incentivize it; advocating for an increased labour supply for new housing development; pushing for more progressive property taxation options; and leveraging the collective power of municipalities in advocating for these changes.
Councillors also discussed other ways to improve the affordable housing situation in Barrie, including a new zoning bylaw that encourages more than new single-family homes, specifically more residential rental units.
“Make no mistake, the new zoning bylaw is looking at not having single-detached homes as the only permitted use on the majority of the city’s property — allowing semi-detached, triplexes, row houses,” Banfield said. “That’s a big change from where we are at right now.”
Affordable housing is a range of housing types allowing families and individuals, of all income levels, to find suitable places to live without spending a disproportionate percentage of their income on housing.
Affordable housing can include ownership, rental or subsidized housing.
The city defines affordable rental housing as a unit for which the rent doesn’t exceed 30 per cent of the gross annual household income for low-to moderate-income households. That income is based upon the most recent Canada Census statistics for Barrie, which are updated every five years.
The current strategy was based on Simcoe County’s 10-year affordable housing and homelessness prevention strategy of 2015.
While the city has exceeded the original target of 840 affordable units established in the current strategy, affordability continues to erode as the housing crisis continues to intensify.
The affordability profile and overall housing gaps have also shifted significantly since the current strategy was written in 2015, with both rent and home prices rising significantly during this period, creating significant affordability pressures across a much wider spectrum of the income distribution and housing continuum.
The County of Simcoe is the designated service manager for Barrie, under provincial law. The county is responsible for planning, funding and managing social housing programs and homelessness services. While Barrie council can encourage and facilitate the provisions of affordable housing through initiatives, programs and policies, the city does not provide nor manage housing.
“We have a funding stream for affordable housing,” said Mayor Alex Nuttall. “We chose to deliver that through the County of Simcoe."
But this city council is also taking measures to address chronic homelessness and enhance public safety in Barrie, action passed by direct motion on May 17, 2023. These measures include dealing with drug addiction, mental health problems, public safety, panhandling, shelter, counselling, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, while spending as much as $825,000 on these measures during each of the next two years.
