Question 1: What are the…

Question 1: What are the key barriers impacting your municipality in meeting its housing needs that may be unique to northern and rural communities?
• Regional Market Areas (RMAs) for rural municipalities reinforce the imbalances of historic land designations that exist in some areas. Rural economies and homebuyers have less capacity to absorb high land costs associated with scarcity in urban areas, and have less regional infrastructure that needs to be planned at the County scale, so RMAs are less relevant.
• Lack of clarity or guidance for development on partial/private services – what is appropriate, including the role of new technologies?
• Municipalities have limited ability to drive local solutions on housing affordability, as the provincial and federal governments control the funding. Project funding announcements are unpredictable, have short turnaround requirements, and are tied to the fiscal year, which make it difficult for smaller service providers to plan, schedule, and deliver projects.
• Despite the significant rise in prices, the market for traditional 1-storey detached homes is large, based on a segment of the population with high incomes and/or who are relocating with equity from sales in higher-priced markets. Developers will build 1-storey townhouses, additional units in some homes, or high-density apartments, but no other forms of ‘missing middle’ housing because they can make more money on other housing forms.
• Timelines for updating housing policy are too long. We know what we want to see, but smaller Rural Planning departments struggle to keep up with the pace of legislative change. The province could provide for an ‘emergency implementation’ timeline to reduce statutory requirements.
• We need a lot of affordable housing throughout our communities, but with smaller communities, each project is not large enough to achieve economy of scale and larger projects would stress community capacity.
• Housing services providers cannot maintain or renew housing units because of the shortfall between provincial housing supports to tenants and the operating costs of the units.

Question 2: What kind of flexibility is needed to address housing needs in your municipality?
• Flexibility in defining regional market areas so communities can grow at and manage their pace of development relative to their capacity to implement the infrastructure requirements to achieve growth
• Opportunity to do infilling or rounding out of existing clusters (hamlets) whether within or outside of currently identified ‘hamlet’ settlement areas, where significant conflicts (such as 5 or more dwellings on separate lots in a defined area) have already been established. This provides an opportunity for rural living without introducing new land use conflicts broadly across the landscape.
• Employment land conversions – consider establishing a threshold for small conversions or adjustments, that can proceed without large scale processes.
• Consider an equivalent of Transit Oriented Development planning resources that can support node and corridor planning in fast-growing smaller communities.

Question 3: What potential tools or policies could the government consider to address housing needs in your municipality while balancing other provincial priorities?
• Brownfield Redevelopment costs are prohibitive to supporting reuse in our limited-size urban areas.
• Province could better resource their review / approval functions, ex. Filing of Record of Site Condition, water, sewer infrastructure approvals so that shovels can get in the ground faster, and consider supports to indigenous community capacity to engage in land use planning.
• Afford municipalities more flexibility in securing affordable/attainable housing development, such as an Inclusionary Zoning framework that is relevant to Rural municipalities
• Complete an update to the D5-4 Groundwater Quality Impact Assessment Guideline to address (among other things) the opportunities afforded by new wastewater treatment technologies. This could unlock higher densities for development on private services while ensuring groundwater resources are protected, and create a clear review standard.
• Use further resources to support the use of housing as homes, rather than as speculative investments.

Question 4: Do you have other suggestions for ways to improve housing supply and needs in rural and northern municipalities?
• Fund a % of municipal hard infrastructure, especially to 'finish the job' in communities with partial services [water or sewer] in place, to facilitate the development of complete communities at appropriate densities.
• Fund studies for infrastructure capacity and master planning so Municipalities can identify and get their best next step to accommodate growth “shovel ready.”
• A more stable and predictable intake process for affordable housing project funding, with streamlined reporting requirements that can be supported within the funding envelope.