Grey County council is not interested in asking planning department staff to do more than they already are doing on the issue of affordable and attainable housing.
A resolution from The Blue Mountains Mayor Alar Soever calling on county staff to vigorously apply all affordable housing tools in the county’s Official Plan (OP) on all development proposals and to bring forward new tools to help on the issue through the county’s OP update process was roundly defeated by county council at its meeting on June 23.
At the meeting, the Director of Planning Scott Taylor delivered a report to council about affordable and attainable housing and the county’s efforts to advance the issue.
Over the past several weeks, a division has emerged between the county and the Town of The Blue Mountains on affordable/attainable housing. The county maintains it does not have tools to impose conditions on developers, while the town says the tools are in the OP, but aren’t being used.
“It’s the implementation that remains a challenge given our current tools,” said Taylor, who noted that the language in the OP on the issue is softer because of a lack of those tools. “It was felt we didn’t have the strong authority to say: you shall achieve.”
Mayor Soever argued the opposite.
“We take a more positive view of our OP in terms of what we can ask a developer,” said Soever. “There are a number of areas in our OP that are quite strong.”
Soever said the county OP can ask a developer to consider the healthy development checklist (including affordable housing) as part of the application process. He also cited a provision in the OP that lists a number of considerations required from a proponent to justify in their application, which includes the provision of attainable housing.
Soever said the county can ask for an estimated selling price per unit before a development application is deemed complete and the county is also supposed to collect data on an annual basis about housing affordability.
“We are taking the view that there are a number of tools that already exist,” said Soever. “Are we doing all this? I don’t see that we are doing all those. These are maybe tools that we are not using.”
In response Taylor said, “no, we’re not doing all that.”
According to Taylor, county staff have regular discussions about affordable housing with the development community, and he said the developers ask about financial incentives from the county and other levels of government to assist with affordable housing.
Taylor said one of the county’s first questions to any potential developer is about what kinds of housing they are considering. He said 10-12 years ago the answer almost always was single-detached. However, he noted in recent years there is more openness to other forms of housing.
“I assure you, those discussions are happening on a regular basis,” said Taylor, who noted that staff could consider changing their development reports to provide information about those conversations. “The challenge right now is those implementation tools.”
The report and discussion prompted Soever’s resolution, which found little support at the council table.
“This appears to be a motion to tell staff to do what they’re already doing,” said Southgate Mayor John Woodbury.
The resolution was defeated in a 62-18 vote with just Soever, The Blue Mountains Deputy Mayor Peter Bordignon and the Grey Highlands mayor voting in favour.
