Virtual meeting on a Housing Strategy gets more than a mouthful of data - but few realistic ideas were put on the table

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

MARCH 11th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The people who made the time to watch the first meeting on the approach the city wants to take to its Housing Strategy got a sense as to the size of the problem – along with plea from city staff running the virtual event to please take part in the survey and let them hear from you.

There weren’t enough people to keep the phone lines buzzing – a couple of people got in twice, one small developer created a phony name for himself and called in twice; one gentlemen needed three cracks at the log in procedure to make it to the screen.

Organizationally – it was presented in a traditional way – with a panel of people who are close to housing issues and have an understanding of the size of the challenge.

Then a panel of citizens and then calls were taken from those watching.

The five experts knew their stuff and brought unique and important perspectives to the event.

Mike Simiono, newly acquired Director of Community Planning (Burlington poached him from Oakville) talked about the meaning of owning a house and the role it take in creating community.

Ted Hildebrandt did a statistical overview. Some of his material was dated but the points were still clearly made.

The number of people who drive to Burlington from Hamilton was startling – the belief is that people live in Hamilton because housing is less expensive there.

commuting flow

The commuting flow in the chart on slide #7 was taken from the 2016 Census. It is derived from a question asking “At what address did this person usually work most of the time?” On this chart, the blue bars indicate people that are commuting to work in Burlington from the respective municipalities. The orange bars indicate people leaving Burlington to work in other municipalities. In terms of the figure of 24,505, this is the number of Hamilton residents that travel to work in Burlington.

 

 

 

rental vacancy 16-20

More space available …

rental rates Ham - Burl

... at less cost.

living alone 2016

The number of people living alone – Data as at 2016

pop changes regionCity staff did an entry explanation to set the context within which the city has to work. Currently the city has no direct responsibility for housing: that responsibility rests with the Region – they work with what the province makes available in terms of enabling legislation and funding.

The federal government does have a National Housing policy – it just doesn’t seem to be meeting the needs of places like Burlington.

Central Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) has been active and creative in funding and sponsoring creative approaches to housing – the co-op housing sector would not exist were it not for CMHC.

The cost of housing in Burlington and the availability of affordable housing is the challenge before the working group the city is setting up to dive deep into the data.

housing sales

Between 2015 and 2019, the average price of new sale in Burlington was $527,949 and the average price of resale was $676,628. On an average annual basis, the average price of new sales increased at a rate of 5.6 per cent per year. The average price of resale increased at a higher average rate of 9.3 per cent. The 5 year average price of both new and resale was $670,091, which increased at an average rate of 8.7 per cent per year.

affordable housing sales

Nine affordable units were sold for more than $393, 400 – which is the threshold for an affordable home. 24 were sold below the threshold.

City council endorsed a recommendation from the Planning department and hired consultants.  The plan is to move into an action-implementing mode once the results of the survey have been analyzed as well as any feedback from those that took part in the Zoom meeting.

A report gets taken to Council on April 6th.

There is a survey on the city Get Involved part of the web site. That survey is open until Match 19th – LINK to the survey.

 

 

There are affordable units in Burlington:

1,497 subsidized units made available by community housing providers in Burlington

838 units across 13 properties are directly owned/operated by Halton Community Housing Corporation.

659 other subsidized housing units are made available by 11 other non profit and cooperative housing providers funded by Halton Region.

162 additional new subsidized (brick and mortar) units were recently created in Burlington by the Region as part of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy

344 additional subsidized housing options and growing have been secured in Burlington with 16 landlords using rent supplement funding.

125 additional Burlington based households and growing are receiving a portable housing allowance to subsidize their rents.

This adds up to 2,128 subsidized units in Burlington.

City Council wants to increase that number – and is hoping to come up with a strategy that will make it possible.

There will be a part 2 with the comments made by the panelists.

 

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