I support Langford’s Affordable Housing Programme, but I have a question about it.

Whenever its spoken of by the Mayor or referenced in the media, it’s stated that every 10th unit has to be an affordable housing unit. Mayor Young frequently, as he is quoted doing in the article below, also mentions that it’s not about taking money from developers and finding something to spend it on, it’s about building units directly. These statements aren’t the whole story.

As an observer in Council meetings and Planning & Zoning Committee meetings, I have many times heard it said, in lieu of creating an affordable housing unit, that such-and-such a dollar amount has been donated by the developer to the City’s Affordable Housing Fund. I most frequently hear this in reference to multi-unit buildings, but it’s also heard sometimes for more traditional subdivisions. The wording on Langford’s website says: “The Policy requires that 10% of the homes in any subdivision over 10 units is to be sold as affordable for $160,000.”

The word “subdivision” seems to be the key one, and raises a question (and perhaps a concern) for programme’s future. Only single-family dwelling developments, and only ones with at least 10 units within the development, are generating affordable housing units at this time. There are only so many new subdivisions going in, and Les Bjola himself in a CFAX radio interview earlier this year noted that the majority of West Shore development in the future won’t be of this type.

So I absolutely support the Affordable Housing Programme, and I support is strongly. However, despite the way the programme is pitched as being one that avoids bureaucracy, in the future the developers themselves are telling us to expect the programme to change as the nature of development becomes mostly multi-unit buildings as opposed to traditional subdivisions. At some point Langford will have a pot of money building up and there’s no talk of there being any plan for it, and at that time Langford will have to find ways to make sure there aren’t, as Stew Young puts it below, dollars “that are put into a program and disappear into a bureaucracy.”

I would like to hear from our elected officials what the long-term Affordable Housing Plan is, because the way it’s being pitched is not entirely the current reality, due to the growing prevalence of multi-unit buildings, and it’s certainly not the programme’s future with multi-unit buildings being the norm going forward Read the rest of this entry »