By Pepper Parr
August 12, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
During an interview on the CHCH TV Morning Joe program Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward was asked about some of the development projects going on.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward – trying to explain what was meant by affordable
Well, there’s there’s 25,000 units in the pipeline. That’s in various stages of review. People want to come to Burlington – we’re open for business – we welcome development. Of course we want to direct where we think it should go, which is around our GO stations and in aging retail plazas. There are 25,000 in the development pipeline; that’s part of our goal to issue permits for 29,000 homes. That’s the housing pledge that we use.
We signed up to do our part to help the province build deliver 1.2 million homes, we need more housing for people
How many of those 25,000 units would be affordable housing units?
Well, this is a question and it depends on what you define as affordable and so that is something that we’re working on the Ontario’s Big City Mayors caucus, which of course I’m the chair, 29 mayors of the largest municipalities in Ontario.
We need to have a standard definition of what affordable is. Is it 80% of income, is it 30% of your take home pay; what is it and then what about assisted housing? What about more deeply affordable housing. So you know rent geared to income, Co Op style, all of that is so desperately needed throughout the province.
And so we are working right now with Ontario Big City Mayors and with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to suggest some standard definition so we know what we’re talking about. We also need to focus on making sure that there’s a range of housing types.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward
What has been built in Burlington is mostly one bedroom bachelor that are not suitable for families. And we know that we need to build more housing for families and that’s going to be at a different price point.
Stay tuned. There’s lots more to come. We’re doing some research on this and we’re offering to work with the province to come up with some of those definitions. But in terms of the housing, the 25,000.
Some of it will be on an affordability metric, depending on how you define that.
We’re also working with Halton Region to buy some units and put it on our housing wait list for people who need assistance.
Yes Jim, we heard it too!
Did she really say 80% of income? Is this a transcription error?
Editors note: She actually said that.