By Pepper Parr
April 18th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
It is a sticky situation.
The cost of a house has sky rocketed.
The inventory of houses for sale is low.
Two groups are currently looking into the housing problem.
And a Housing Working group that was brought into being due to the persistent efforts of ward 4 Councillor Shawna Stolte.
And she is about to get a public spanking on Tuesday for telling the public about some of the things being said in Closed sessions of Council about property that is being redeveloped by public agencies to benefit the public.
Go figure.
Having said that, the city planners are doing some solid work; gathering the information on which to base the strategy that is needed to find a way to provide housing for the thousands of people who are going to move to Burlington in the next two decades.
Expect the work that City Council has approved on the housing file to become a major election issue. Will it get the Mayor re-elected? The people who will benefit have yet to move to the city.
There is the common ground established that housing is a basic human right, and there is a collective civic responsibility to ensure that the supply of housing available within a community can accommodate the varying needs of residents throughout their lifetime, including financial needs.
Working Group on Housing, made up of both volunteers and people steeped in the business of housing has met virtually for a number of months.
Burlington has initiated a project to develop an Innovative Housing Strategy that sets out policies, tools, identifies partnerships, and actions to address residents’ current and future housing needs. The consulting team of Dillon Consulting Limited (Dillon) and SHS Consulting (SHS) were retained by the City to carry out this work, in partnership with the City’s Housing Strategy Project team, Housing Strategy Working Group, and Housing Strategy Steering Committee.
Housing: what can Burlington do and how do they go about doing it.
While there has been a lot of effort and emphasis on improving housing opportunities in the City, this Housing Strategy project provides an opportunity for a focused approach. The principal objective is to develop an innovative Housing Strategy for the City of Burlington that sets out policies, tools, and actions to address residents’ housing needs, identifies opportunities for partnerships, and redefines Burlington’s role in meeting local housing needs, now and in the future.
What is the biggest issue? Affordability or inventory?
There are many different ways of defining affordable housing. Definitions that exist in provincial laws, may differ from definitions used in federal housing programs. For many people, there is also a very personal definition of affordability based on their own income.
Affordable Housing
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) defines affordable housing as housing with a price for purchase or rent where households spend no more than 30 percent of their gross household income on housing.
In the case of ownership housing, the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) defines affordable housing as, the least expensive of:
- Housing for which the purchase price results in annual accommodation costs which do not exceed 30 percent of gross annual housing income for low and moderate income households; or
- Housing for which the purchase price is at least 10 percent below the average purchase price of a resale unit in the regional market area;
In the case of rental housing, the PPS defines affordable housing as, the least expensive of:
- A unit for which the rent does not exceed 30 percent of grow annual housing income for low and moderate income households; or
- A unit for which the rent is at or below the average market rent of a unit in the regional market area.
In Halton Region’s Official Plan, affordable housing is defined as:
“housing with a market price (or rent that is affordable to households of low and moderate income, spending no more than 30 percent of their gross income.
-
-
- a) Affordable rental housing should meet the demand of households at the low end, as described in Halton’s annual State of Housing Report, pursuant to Section 86(7). Such households would be able to afford at least three out of ten rental units on the market.
- b) Affordable ownership housing should meet the demand of households at the high end, as identified in Halton’s annual State of Housing Report. Such households would have sufficient income left, after housing expenses, to sustain the basic standard of living.”
-
Attainable Housing
While there is no universal definition of attainable housing, it is often used to refer to rental or ownership housing without any subsidies which is affordable to workforce households or households with moderate incomes. In the US, it is defined as non-subsidized, for-sale housing that is affordable to households with incomes between 80 and 120 percent of the area median income.
Using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), to bring the 2016 incomes to 2021 values, the estimated average household income in Burlington for 2021 is $159,083 and the estimated median household income is $124,154.
Based on research conducted as part of this report, findings indicate the following 2021 average ownership prices in Burlington:
This development at 2100 Brant sold out before the sales office was opened.
Single-detached: $1,398,357
Semi-detached: $901,963
Townhouse: $894,997
Condominium townhouse: $575,299
Condominium apartments: $575,299
This means that, within the context of Burlington, ownership options are only affordable to households earning $164,016 or more on an annual basis, unless they had a down payment greater than 5% or spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs.
With respect to rental tenure, the research conducted as part of this report indicates the following average monthly rents in the primary rental market in Burlington9:
-
-
Some of these units at the Burlington GO station will be rentals.
Bachelor: $1,229
- One bedroom: $1,577
- Two bedroom: $1,641
- Three+ bedroom: $1,658
-
This means that, within the context of Burlington, rental options within the primary rental market are only affordable to households earning $60,072 or more on an annual basis. This is further complicated by the low vacancy rates for rental housing in the City, which has remained below 3% since 2010.
Within the Burlington Context, where the cost of all tenures of housing is high, there are very few “affordable” housing options for households within low and moderate income deciles when applying the Federal and Provincial government’s definition of “affordable”.
Given the City’s stated objective for the Housing Strategy to provide a toolkit with options to address housing needs across the entire housing continuum, the strategy will need to provide tools to address both housing “affordability” and “attainability” throughout Burlington to best position itself as an inclusive and complete community that provides housing options for all.
When “affordable housing” is used within the context of this report it is meant to encapsulate the definition of affordable as set out in the Halton Region Official Plan and does not mean government- assisted housing or subsidized housing.
These two developments; one at the Burlington GO station and the other in the east end are part of the inventory that will come on line at some point. The GO station development has most of the approvals it needs. What isn’t know – how much will the rents be?
Burlington’s role in housing.
Through the work completed to date, it was determined that the biggest impact the City of Burlington can make, as a lower-tier municipality, is to provide innovative solutions to address housing affordability and attainability for middle-income earners. Increasingly, middle-income households are struggling to find housing that is appropriate for their needs and income level in Burlington with the high cost of housing posing significant challenges for middle-income working households.
Providing support to these households insures that they can remain housed in Burlington.
It is in addressing the middle income needs where the City can make the biggest moves.
My comment is if housing prices can’t be met to accommodate the huge number of new comers, then don’t think the City can then tax the exisiting residents to compensate. Southern Ontario’s mentality of entitlement of living in the South, when I came from the North because I personally could not afford the costs of Southern Ontario, will not be accepted, and should not be accepted, as there are affordable places to live in Canada. Large warehouses can be built in the North for job placements with road and rail service everywhere. Get a life, cut the Southern greed!
I think the effective inflation is much greater than advertised. Everything, in every corner of our lives it seems, has gone up. Salaries should go up 15 percent to keep pace, but cannot. Lower taxation would help in so many ways. But our goobermint can only come up with (often poor) reasons to raise taxes, with no limits in sight. These pigeons will all come home to roost, and it won’t be at all nice. And the house prices? Eventually, I suppose the higher interest rates will become a factor and people will choose to live farther away. And businesses will choose somewhere more affordable to be and for their staff to live. Market forces will work, but take time. I’m not a politician, so am not demanding an immediate overnight remedy.
A solution; Wean off the North American economic reliance with population growth. Not a balanced cross society way to achieve prosperity.
When something is full, It means just that, It is full.
Burlington is full. The region? not so much, the Province? definitely not.
Can anyone today define what a “middle income” earner is today and will be over the short and medium term If that can’t be defined then how doe we suppose hiring consultants have any chance of defining any workable or realistic solutions?
I for one am much more focused on affordability for citizens that currently live in the community and not those folks who politicians and economists expect will want to live in this community in the next ten to twenty years.
Lets mandate granny pods and tiny homes in all single family lots above a certain lot size. I find these far preferable to the monstrosities with mostly tiny condo units being considered for the mobility hubs that will result in complete transportation gridlock.
This Burlington senior will most certainly leave his detached home destined only for a box or an urn.