There’s been a lot of talk at Town Hall about kick-starting attainable housing in Huntsville, but what does it really mean?
Huntsville Mayor Scott Aitchison said that although the creation of affordable housing has typically been a District of Muskoka function, the money comes from senior levels of government and there never really seems to be enough money to build the number of units Huntsville needs.
“I’ve learned that the need in Huntsville is about in the 300-unit range on the affordable housing wait list. That’s a vetted list of people who need some form of affordable housing. Some of those people need social housing, some of those people need just affordable housing, and some need a rent subsidy – there’s quite a different range of needs there.”
He said in the absence of capital funding for 300 units, the Town of Huntsville is taking a look at the issue to see what it can do to help spur the creation of more affordable housing in the community. “There’s quite a range of things that we can do including making Town-owned land available to developers if they were to develop affordable housing.”
Aside from the cost of the land, developers are also required to pay for building permits, development charges at the Town and District levels as well as water and sewer connection charges. “It goes on and on and on and it can get pretty expensive,” said Aitchison, who noted that the municipality sector could waive those fees along with providing developers a property tax break.
We also have the ability, I just learned, to create something like we did with the community improvement plan for the downtown core where we can waive taxes or have them at zero at the beginning and graduate up over ten years to whatever the normal rate would be – we have those tools at our disposal as well. So now if you take every municipal charge out of the mix and give somebody a piece of land, that’s got to be pretty doable to build a whole bunch of units.
Mayor Scott Aitchison
In terms of ensuring the rents stay below market value, Aitchison said the municipality could do something similar to what the District does when it provides a capital subsidy to a developer. He said an agreement would have to be signed indicating that the unit rents, for example, would be kept 20 per cent below market rate. “They have to keep it that way for 20 years and if at some point they don’t, then they owe us the money back and so you’d do the same thing with the land.”
Aitchison said the value of the waived fees along with the value of the land would be quantified in an agreement, which would provide a prorated scale if any of the units are converted to market rent before the end of the agreement. He also said the idea behind such a development would be to build different types of housing including housing at market rates in order to ensure the development is not stigmatized in the community. The mix would be considered as part of the development’s approval and quantified accordingly in the agreement with the municipality.
In terms of waiving the District part of the fees, Aitchison said he has spoken to District community services staff members who are excited about the idea and acknowledge the need. “The local municipality and the District municipality working together along with the private sector – we think we might have a better chance of getting something done.”
When asked about additional housing stock already coming on the market as a result of demand, Aitchison said:
I don’t think we can wait any longer. We’ve tried to let the market do it all along and that’s not working and so we need to stimulate things. Solving this problem might be one of the best economic development moves we could ever make.
Aitchison said a Request for Expression of Interest is being fine-tuned. It will ask the private or a combination of the private and public sector what it would take to get some affordable housing on the market. The Mayor said he’ll also be appointing a working group of about five people to look at housing issues in the community and consider various types of housing, some of which may not be supported by the Town’s Official Plan. Co-housing is one example. “If people come together and say this is what we want to do but the zoning bylaw doesn’t permit it, why shouldn’t we change that?” He also talked about the possibility of building more than just one house on a property – something that is not currently allowed under current zoning bylaws. He said those are all issues that will be considered by the working group which will be officially appointed at Huntsville’s next council meeting on January 23, 2017. The group will comprise Huntsville councillors, District staff and members of the private sector.
Why hasn’t this been done before? “There was no political will until now,” said the Mayor.
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It is important that at least 30 units (10%) be accessible. And although conceptually, the idea of including “different types of housing” is a good one; NIMBY will render it an extremely hard sell in reality.
Affordable housing is such a good idea. But also we need geared to income housing for seniors. I am a former resident of Huntsville and as a senior i would love to come back to my home town. I have been investigating and asking about the rent there and it is way way too high for my budget. I would appreciate hearing from you on this. Thankyou.
I hope Mayor Aitchison can make affordable housing work.The town-owned land has been explored in the past and not viable.
Best Wishes.