Halifax deputy mayor: encourage affordable housing by waiving development fees

[Keith P.]

https://www.thestar.com/halifax/2019...ment-fees.html

Tony Mancini has a motion coming to Halifax regional council’s meeting on Tuesday asking his colleagues to direct the chief administrative officer to “waive municipal construction related fees” for non-profits “engaged in development of such things as affordable accessible housing or similar public benefits.”

Council amended a bylaw last year to waive building permit fees for non-profits building affordable housing.

“However, additional fees and inspection charges not included in this previous amendment can still amount to impactful costs,” Mancini wrote in his motion, released with the council agenda on Friday.

Mancini argues waiving those fees — “such things as plumbing fees, solid waste charges, lateral connection fees, future settlement charges, deposits, inspection fees” — would reduce barriers to the creation of affordable housing in Halifax.

Halifax Water’s regional development charge, for instance, amounts to about $2,700 per unit. That pays for sewer and water connections for new buildings.

Ross Cantwell, who runs the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia, is working to construct two new buildings on Gottingen St., comprising about 100 affordable units. Cantwell’s developments were the catalyst for council’s bylaw amendment. The building permit fees council waived for his buildings added up to $228,000. The regional development charges to Halifax Water, however, added up to $715,000.

That Halifax Water fee is ridiculously high. They are a bad utility to begin with, arrogant and unresponsive to customer issues, and seem to have the UARB and HRM Council under their thumbs. I wonder if their fees would pass the test of the Eurig case which ruled that fees for service charged by government agencies are to be representative of the cost of providing the service.

[The Crow Whisperer]

HRM Water should be broken up and sold to private companies, so should Metro Transit.