With new 'More Homes' legislation, the province could knock down municipal efforts to create and protect affordable housing
It’s the most consequential, far-reaching piece of housing legislation and regulatory change in Ontario in recent memory
Taylor Blewett, Ottawa Citizen
Nov 07, 2022 • 1 hour ago • 9 minute read
Gathered with a small group of fellow tenant-activists, armed with protest signs that attract sporadic honks from passing cars on Greenbank Road, Norma-Jean Quibell says it feels like they’re back at square one.
Urging her fellow protesters with the social justice organization Ottawa ACORN to keep the energy up, Quibell has a lot on her mind. She’s got chants to lead, petitions and flyers to help hand out, and a particular goal that’s brought the group to a Nepean strip mall’s parking lot: delivering a letter to PC MPP Lisa MacLeod.
A 37-year-old mother of two and recent graduate of Algonquin College’s law clerk program, Quibell says her family pays $1,500 a month for their Bayshore townhouse. She’s been job hunting while her partner works for minimum wage, and after three above-guideline rent increases in six years, her family now dedicates more than 50 per cent of their income to rent.
“I feel like I’m being moved out of this city, even though I’ve spent my entire life in this city,” said Quibell. “The only person winning with Doug Ford in power is the developers, not us.”
The setback that’s left Quibell discouraged — and angry enough that she’s out in her well-worn protest gear — came via the “More Homes Built Faster” housing announcement by the provincial government last month, dropped the day after municipal elections across Ontario.
It’s the most consequential, far-reaching piece of housing legislation and regulatory change in Ontario in recent memory. And its contents threaten to undo years of work by affordable housing advocates and the cities who’ve acted in line with their calls to do more for renters and lower-income people facing a housing market hostile to their needs.
The provincial Progressive Conservative government says these changes are being looked at to get more housing built across the board. But to Quibell, it’s a crushing, infuriating decision.
She reminded those protesting Thursday morning that they weren’t alone. In Toronto, Hamilton, London and Peel, ACORN members were also fighting back against the province’s proposals to “take away the power of cities,” as Quibell put it, by overriding municipal efforts to protect tenants and create affordable housing.
At the heart of the conflict are two tools that are available to local governments to wrest new lower-priced housing from developers and better protect people’s existing affordable homes.
Called “inclusionary zoning” and “rental replacement,” these policy levers have increasingly piqued the interest of municipalities — Ottawa among them — as a way to save space for lower-income people the market isn’t likely to prioritize, urged on by groups like ACORN.
It’s been an unwelcome trend for the development industry, given the financial impact these policies could have on their work to build homes. The province is now proposing to curtail how cities can use them.
Housing supply, and unlocking more of it, is ultimately what the province is pursuing through the legislation it unveiled last month, says Jason Burggraaf, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association.
Developers deliver that supply and the province is trying to address impediments that may be getting in the way.
The provincial message has been that hitting a target of 1.5 million new homes in the next decade is very much in the public interest, and building them fast enough demands the kind of bold action the PC majority government is now moving to implement.
“The new bill is infuriating because it works against a lot of progress that ACORN has made in recent years,” Quibell said.
She listed off the work she felt led to more aggressive action on affordable housing at the municipal level: tenants’ meetings, reports and rallies, press conferences, and presence at city council meetings.
“With this bill, I don’t feel like there will be any honest negotiation,” she said. “I feel like they’re just going to ignore us.”
It was impossible for city council to ignore the voices of tenants, many ACORN-affiliated, when they stacked the list of public delegates at a June committee meeting. On the docket was how the city should move forward on “inclusionary zoning” and “rental replacement” as affordable housing tools.
People shared personal stories, sometimes on the edge of tears. A single mom in Hintonburg, who received an eviction notice during the pandemic lockdown, said she’s now paying $800 more in rent for a new place. A renter in Vanier detailed how her landlord’s quest to demolish the house her family rents left her so stressed that she ended up at the hospital. A tenant who was financially reliant on disability support recalled viewing a bachelor apartment being shared by seven people.
Inclusionary zoning, which has been in the works for years in Ottawa, would require that developers include a certain portion of units that meet affordability criteria in new builds near major transit stations.
Though these units have been planned as moderately affordable, the city or non-profits could help deepen their discount.
The other tool, known as rental replacement, would allow the city to impose new conditions on developers who want to demolish or convert existing rental housing, to try to address the loss of lower-priced, redevelopment-ripe units in the city’s rental market. It could also better support tenants who find themselves out of a home when their landlord decides it’s time for a tear-down.
Through motions passed at the committee meeting, councillors asked city staff as they continued policy-crafting to consider upping inclusionary zoning requirements for condo builds to 20 per cent of the development, an increase from the 10 per cent staff originally proposed, and including rental projects instead of initially exempting them. They also directed staff to look into the feasibility of making permission for housing demolition contingent on demands that go beyond what provincial law requires, such as the replacement of units lost with new ones at the same rent and more support for those displaced in the interim.
Quibell was among those who addressed the committee. While city councillors weren’t as aggressive as affordable housing advocates wanted them to be, in the directions they gave staff for their continued work on the bylaws, she said that June meeting felt like a victory.
That is, until the provincial government stepped in with a proposed regulatory change, rolled out alongside the More Homes Built Faster Act, that would limit what cities can do with inclusionary zoning to make things consistent provincewide and give more cost certainty to developers.
“It’s just ripped all away from us,” Quibell said. “Doug Ford’s government doesn’t see us every day. Our city council does. And now they have less power.”
The framework the province has put forward for all cities would demand fewer units, shorter affordability periods and a different pricing framework than what cities including Ottawa and Toronto have proposed for inclusionary zoning units in new builds around major transit stations.
It’s a win for the residential development community, a group that also contends this is a win for residents.
Developers have long argued that imposing a requirement to discount some units could jeopardize efforts to expand supply and make housing for non-subsidized buyers or renters more expensive.
John Dickie, chair of the Eastern Ontario Landlord Organization, says builders expected an “upward creep” in the quantity of discounted units demanded of them, as more municipalities moved to implement inclusionary zoning.
Councillors who wanted to up the inclusionary zoning ask of those in his industry “simply don’t get the math” when it comes to rental development at this time, said Dickie, pointing to rising interest rates and construction costs.
However, councillors at the June meeting showed sensitivity to industry impacts by asking staff to consider ways to offset the cost of delivering inclusionary zoning for developers, while declining to pursue some of the loftier asks requested by voices in the affordable housing world.
The Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, for example, called for a more ambitious framework with a baseline requirement of 20 per cent inclusionary zoning units for modest- and low-income households in new buildings.
The direction the council committee endorsed was to look at up to 10 per cent for rentals and at least that much for condos. It was a letdown for some housing advocates, but they did see progress in their work with the city and a willingness to engage.
Now the province is proposing a five per cent cap, and risks “completely gutting the concept of inclusionary zoning,” said Ray Sullivan, executive director of the Ottawa Community Land Trust.
Online provincial consultation on the proposed inclusionary zoning changes closes early next month. Passage of the accompanying and controversial More Homes Built Faster Act, meanwhile, could happen by the end of November.
“I feel a little overwhelmed with the speed and still trying to digest it,” said Meg McCallum, the interim executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness.
At Ottawa City Hall, Coun. Jeff Leiper knows well that the provincial government sets the rules. But he’s not convinced Queen’s Park knows better than cities what ought to be done in this instance.
“The development community has its ear and they have put these arguments to a level of government that is sympathetic to hearing them,” he said. “And that level of government is implementing legislation that will overrule the advice of local municipalities.”
In a rental replacement bylaw, Leiper sees an opportunity to formalize and flesh out the work the city has increasingly been doing with developers on a case-by-case basis when they come to city hall looking for redevelopment permissions.
On projects such as the transformation of the Manor Park Estates townhouse community off Montreal Road, and the demolition of a downtown six-plex on Nepean Street, there have been agreements signed to provide affordable housing for displaced tenants. But ultimately, said Leiper, these have relied on the cooperation of the developers, while a rental replacement bylaw could be legally defended if a builder didn’t want to play ball.
Toronto has had such a policy for years and Hamilton, like Ottawa, has been looking to follow suit.
What the provincial government is now proposing is to give the housing minister the power to “standardize and clarify” what municipalities can include in such bylaws, “in order to provide consistency and streamline the construction and revitalization of new housing supply.”
It’s sparked significant concern in Toronto, where the city’s former chief planner has warned it could mean “open season on low-income apartment buildings in this city” and more homelessness.
Much of Ottawa’s purpose-built rental stock is more than 50 years old, said McCallum, and there is some need for rejuvenation. But she also argues the need for more consideration for what happens to people and the city’s shrinking stock of lower-priced rental units when those buildings get torn down.
What Leiper looks at what the provincial government is moving to do, he sees interference with municipal efforts to intervene in places where they’ve watched the market fail their residents.
“Addressing market failure is not some ideological stance,” he said. “We’re trying to achieve a public interest outcome and we’re not being afforded that chance.”
Without measures such as inclusionary zoning and rental replacement, Leiper’s fear is that years from now, with the exception of government and non-profit-built housing, transit-adjacent, amenity-rich areas like those in his Kitchissippi ward will become accessible only to the most affluent.
Back at the strip mall on Greenbank Road, ACORN activists cycled through protest chants while waiting for someone from MPP MacLeod’s office to come down and get a letter they had for her, outlining the reasons for their opposition to the More Homes Built Faster Act. No one appeared.
Instead, the group left with the letter taped up in front of MacLeod’s office, on the outside of its heavy wooden door.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...is-stepping-in
Prev
Linear Mode
