Housing Security and Affordable Housing

by | Aug 23, 2021 | Our Community

Ever since I’ve been in office, I’ve been working on housing insecurity, and so has the municipality. To say that this is a complex issue is an understatement.

Legislatively, housing is a provincial responsibility. More important than that, however, housing is a human responsibility. HRM Council has a strong interest in helping with the housing crisis, even though it isn’t in our mandate. (One challenge is that any funding that goes to housing doesn’t go to our defined mandate, so we have to limit other HRM services or we have to raise taxes and fees.)

We (HRM) have been struggling between what we could or should do and what we can do. We’ve also seen what has been happening with the temporary shelters and the tents showing up in public spaces and the lack of affordable housing.

In this post I talk about a number of things related to housing:

The Housing Continuum

Housing is a continuum. On one end of the continuum is market housing, where you rent or own your own apartment, house, or condo. On the other end of the continuum is homeless. The CMHC has a good discussion of that here: https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/industry-innovation-and-leadership/industry-expertise/affordable-housing/about-affordable-housing/affordable-housing-in-canada and this is the source of the following image.

Supply and Demand

The shortage of housing is largely a supply and demand problem.

There are other factors as well, but at its core you need to have more “dwelling units” than you have families who want to live there. A comfortable vacancy rate is 3-4%. As of June 2022, we have about a 1% vacancy rate across HRM, and about 0% in Lower Sackville. There simply are no available apartments. I’ve looked, multiple times.

We are growing rapidly (according to https://halifaxpartnership.com/research-strategy/halifax-index-2021/people/ which pulls it’s data from Statistics Canada), and much of that growth is coming from outside the country. With about a 2% increase in our population over recent years, we’ve also needed at least a 2% increase in the number of available places for people to live.

The chart below shows the rise in population, in Nova Scotia, in recent years, and it shows that the demand is increasing across the province. This comes from https://novascotia.ca/finance/statistics/archive_news.asp?id=17924&dg=&df=&dto=0&dti=3. Unless we also increase the supply then the housing problem is going to continue to be bad. (updated 23-June-2022)

In Lower Sackville, as of June 2022, we have 17 apartment buildings either being constructed or in some stage of planning. They are:

  • 3 buildings on Old Sackville Road
  • 3 buildings on Sackville Drive (across from Nuthin’ Fancy)
  • 1 building on Sackville Drive (beside McDonald’s)
  • 1 building at Cobequid and Glendale
  • 1 building on Walker Service Road (plus townhouses)
  • 1 building at Sackville Drive and Beaver Bank Connector
  • 7 buildings that are earlier the planning stages, so are too early to list

These will certainly help with the supply, but they are going to take time. By the time they’re ready to move in, we will have more demand.

According to Statistics Canada the population of Halifax was 448,544 in 2020 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710013501) and the population of Nova Scotia was 981,889 (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.4&pickMembers%5B1%5D=2.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2017&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2021&referencePeriods=20170101%2C20210101). With a 2% grown rate, per year, these amounts will be:

YearHRMNova ScotiaIncrease
since 2020
2020448,544981,8890%
2030546,7731,196,91721.90%
2040666,5131,459,03548.59%
2050812,4751,778,55681.14%
2060990,4032,168,050120.80%

If the current trend keeps up, by 2060 our population will more than double. This presents us with a huge challenge. We will need to double our housing supply — and we will need to double the rest of our infrastructure as well. We will need to double our transportation network, communications, food supply, education, health care, and so much more.

The impact of AirBnb

The supply also impacted by the number of AirBnb units in the city. (We refer to these as Short Term Rentals)

Someone could rent out 8 apartments, have them available as AirBnb spaces, have them only used 50% of the time, and still make money from them. By doing this, however, they have removed 8 dwelling units that are available for families to rent.

We need to do something to limit the impact that AirBnb (and other services like that) have on the total housing supply.

We (Regional Council) have requested a report about short term rentals. This currently due to come back in February 2022.

Housing Security

Housing security is an concern for all of us. Generally speaking, we all fit in to one of three categories:

  • housing secure
  • at risk housing
  • homeless

We have far more people in the “at risk housing” and “homeless” category than are recognized – mainly because we don’t have enough of a supply.

For example – you may be able to afford your own home, but if you’re spending more than 30% of your pre-tax income on housing then your risk is higher. You’re spending money on housing that it would be better to spend on food, heat, medication, transportation, education, or other needs. With this, your stress level is higher, and this increases the risk.

And if something happens to your home (a fire, a tree falls on it, etc.) then you need a place to live. Hotels are expensive, and finding another place to live for the short or medium term is incredibly hard. For this reason I constantly remind people that we are all at a higher housing risk than normal — mainly because we don’t have enough of a supply.

As a society, we need to move more towards having secure housing. That being said, we always have those who are in at risk housing or are homeless. This is a permanent situation, and we need to be able to address it.

What is Affordable Housing? (added 24-Aug-2021)

Affordable Housing is defined by the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission (in the 2021 Commission Report on this page: https://nsaffordablehousingcommission.ca/getinvolved) as housing that costs less than 30% of a households pre-tax income. This is the same definition that Housing Trust of Nova Scotia (https://housingtrust.ca/affordable-housing/) uses.

Within the HRM Land Use Bylaws for the Halifax Peninsula, this is shown as: 

the monthly rent for the affordable housing dwelling units shall be no
more than $750 per month for each of the ten units, and such rent
(i) shall include heat, electricity, and hot water; and
(ii) may exclude parking, cable, internet and telephone;

What is Density Bonusing? (added 25-Aug-2021)

Density Bonusing is also called incentive or bonus zoning. We are allowed to implement density bonusing as specified in the Halifax Charter (https://nslegislature.ca/sites/default/files/legc/statutes/halifax%20regional%20municipality%20charter.pdf).

The land use by-laws impose height restrictions on development that may happen. Density bonusing (or incentive bonusing) allows for a building to be built to one height if there are no affordable units, or higher if there are affordable units. There are sometimes other public benefits required as well.

In the Quinpool Road area, for example, a building is allowed to be 78 metres tall. If the building is taller than 62 metres, then it also has to allow for a) 10 affordable units and undergrounding of electrical and utility wires; or b) 20 affordable units; or c) 10 affordable units and a payment of $900K to HRM; or d) a payment of $1.8M to HRM. These two payments are to be put in to a reserve that is specifically for affordable housing.

The reserve is the Density Bonusing Reserve, and is a fairly new reserve account. As of March 31, 2021, has $2.7M in it. This is as reported on page 27 the consolidated financial statements here: https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/210817rc1161b.pdf.

A landlord may choose to benefit from density bonusing or not.

What is Inclusionary Zoning (added 27-Aug-2021)

Inclusionary Zoning would allow us to designate that a certain development has to have a certain number of units that are “affordable”.

HRM is allowed to set rules based on what is allowed in the Municipal Government Act and the Halifax Charter. Neither of these allow for inclusionary zoning, so we are unable to force a landlord to provide affordable housing.

Identifying the At Risk Housing and Homeless populations

Those who are homeless (especially in Lower Sackville) are hard to identify because they could be sleeping in the woods. We wouldn’t see them as clearly as if they were sleeping on a park bench down town. This makes it very difficult to identify how many people are sleeping rough or where they are sleeping rough.

We need to be able to reach these people. Services like the Sackville Area Warming Centre and Freedom Kitchen are great for doing just that. Everyone needs to eat, and in the winter most need to stay warm. This is part of the reason that I’ve supported both of these organizations since their inception.

One challenge with the homeless is that some are comfortable in the woods and don’t want to be identified. Another is that they have no fixed address, and so they can move around and we lose track of them.

Those who are in at risk housing are also hard to identify because they may look like everything is fine, but they may not have the enough medication or they may not have eaten today. We don’t have any organized way to identify people in at risk housing. Right now it’s fair to say that they slip under the radar.

Helping the At Risk Housing population

Setting the supply issue aside, the most common risk for the “at risk housing” population is money. The rent or mortgage may be too high. So how do we, as a society, help those who have a high housing risk?

  1. We need more apartment spaces that are “affordable”, and we need to have the definition of “affordable” match what the family can afford. It has to be less than 30% of the gross family income. This is a very difficult measure to achieve, especially with the disparity that we see between minimum wage and liveable wage. This will not be done voluntarily by most landlords, so we need to provide some incentives for this. Density bonusing is one way to achieve this. We also need to make sure that this is done discretely, so that we don’t allow private information for any tenant to be exposed.
  2. We need to provide more education in a number of areas. Some of this includes personal financial management, and some of it includes food storage, handling, and preparation. These could both be taught in grade school, and it could also be taught to those who are no longer in school. Living above your means is the biggest financial risk that any of us face. If we can provide education on how to manage personal finances then we can promote better decision making. For food – we could resume the home economics courses that were taught years ago, and teach people how to prepare nutritious meals. That could reduce the use of fast food which would also improve health.
  3. We need to provide education and encouragement for personal improvement. Most people want to be in a better place than they are in. Some do not know how to get there. This is one of the more challenging problems to overcome.

Rent Control

According to Statistics Canada (here: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/subjects-start/prices_and_price_indexes/consumer_price_indexes) the cost of living has gone up 3.7% over the past 12 months. This increase is simply to maintain what we already have.

As of August 2021, rent increases are limited to 2% per year.

With these rates, the costs for any landlord are rising faster than their income.

Since any developer will lose money building a new building, there is no real incentive for them to build, unless the rent is high enough to cover future losses. This won’t help those who need affordable housing.

Since any landlord will lose money by keeping a building with no changes, maintenance may be put off unless it is absolutely necessary. Landlords may choose to upgrade their buildings and increase the rent high enough to cover projected losses later on.

If we remove the potential for profit, or even for breaking even, then landlords will not build here. That’s not a scare tactic or a doomsday scenario, rather that’s looking at from the other side of the coin.

This rent control model does not work.

I have not yet seen a rent control model that works to benefit both the landlord and the tenant. That being said, I am open to any suggestions about a model that could work.

Increasing Supply

We need to be able to increase the supply of housing across HRM. We have a number of developers who are willing to invest (as evidenced by the amount of construction in Sackville). We need to make sure that the rest of the system can support that.

One of the challenges (and one of the benefits) of COVID is that many people are working from home. People no longer have a long commute to work, and many meetings are more efficient. (A related challenge is that there is far less social interaction, and so it’s far harder for a group of people to become a team, but that’s a completely different subject.)

Since many more people are working from home, and so have more time available, there are many more home projects getting done.

The HRM Planning department has seen a 50% increase in the number of planning applications since COVID started, and they have to process this increase in capacity without a significant increase in the number of staff. We have also added some people to our Planning department, and so they have to be trained. We have also recently implemented a new computer system, and this requires some training and would need to have some initial adjustments made for it to be more efficient. All of this means that our Planning department has a far higher workload than they did in 2019, and things are taking much longer to process. We are looking at options to counter the challenges, but they will also take time.

Additionally, there is a supply and demand issue with the raw materials. Those who produce the building materials have also been impacted by COVID, so their workforce is down and they cannot produce as much material. Once they do produce that material there are a lot more people who want to buy it. The supply is way down, and the demand is way up, so prices go up and we still see that the materials run out.

These are two significant problems that are not easy to overcome, and yet they are the main cause of why we can’t build enough places for people to live.

Current HRM housing crisis

As pointed out, with the statistical information above, the housing crisis has been growing for years. We need more spaces for people to live.

We’ve heard about drastic rent increases. We’ve heard about a 0.5% vacancy rate in Sackville, and 1% vacancy rate across HRM (a 3-4% vacancy rate, as I mentioned above, is a better rate). We’ve heard the stories about “renovictions” and about one developer starting to demolish an apartment building while a tenant was still living in it. We’ve heard about the current housing prices skyrocketing, where some homes have sold for 250K above the asking price.

The demand is huge, and the supply just isn’t keeping up.

We’ve seen the provincial government impose rent control and COVID eviction bans in order to slow down the crisis.

We’ve also seen more people living rough.

Shelters and tents started appearing in in public parks in late 2020. At the time HRM issued notices that they would be allowed to stay, and that we would work with those who were staying there. HRM has since expanded this information here: https://www.halifax.ca/about-halifax/regional-community-planning/public-safety/common-questions-regarding-homelessness.

HRM has been working with some of those in the encampments, and some of them have moved on to more stable housing. I don’t have the statistics available on how many people were moved in to more stable housing, but I believe it was less than 10 people.

HRM has also received multiple complaints about the shelters and tents on municipal property, many regarding health and safety concerns (including fires), but also sexual assault and human trafficking.

On July 6, 2021, HRM posted a notice about the removal of temporary shelters located on municipal property here: https://www.halifax.ca/home/news/statement-regarding-removal-temporary-shelters-located-municipal-property.

On July 9, 2021, HRM posted a notice about three shelters that had been removed: https://www.halifax.ca/home/news/statement-regarding-removal-three-temporary-shelters-located-municipal-property.

August 18, 2021 temporary shelter removal (updated 22-Oct-2021)

Wednesday, August 18, 2021, was a bad day for Halifax.

After months of discussion, allowing residents to set up tents and shelters in municipal parkland, and after receiving multiple complaints about that, it became clear that a change was necessary. Through those months we reached out to the homeless people there and tried to find them suitable accommodations. We were about to find accommodations for some, but for others it was not possible.

We also heard numerous complaints through both 311 and through the HRP.

From January 13 through August 18, we received 188 complaints through 311. Illegal activity and enforcement were the two main sections that apply to public safety concerns ranging from electrical cords running over property, drug use, fear of covid, people doing illegal activities, debris and garbage from encampments, rotting food, encampments in neighbourhoods – near schools, daycares and recreation centres, disturbances at night, rats, children could go to parks, using the bathroom in the park, general feeling of an unsafe situation.  

From April 1 through August 18 we received just over 100 calls through HRP. These complaints were a mix of disturbances, verbal disputes, assaults, domestic disputes, thefts, indecent acts, liquor offences, break and enters, allegations of threatening behavior as well as quality of life issues and verbal disputes.

In July we issued notices that the shelters needed to be vacated or we would take further action.

On the morning of August 18, contractors, and police showed up to remove the shelters that were in multiple locations. One of them was the Memorial Library property on Spring Garden Road. The removal took longer than expected, and a protest grew and became violent and dangerous. We’ve all seen some of the reports on traditional media and social media about this.

I was not there, so I do not have first hand knowledge about what happened. What I heard was terrible, and it was the type of confrontation that I don’t want to see in HRM.

I am troubled by reports of officers not showing their names but of wearing a thin blue line. I am troubled by reports of protestors throwing things at the contractors who were using a chainsaw to dismantle one of the shelters. I’m also troubled by a number of other aspects of this, and they are being addressed internally.

Some people were arrested for being part of a protest that wasn’t peaceful.

Some of the homeless found better accommodations.

Some of the homeless moved to other parks.

We removed the shelters from that park, but this didn’t do much to solve the homeless problem. We need to do more.

House Prices

I started writing this when the housing prices were rising, and they have since skyrocketed. This chart (data from: https://housepriceindex.ca/2022/06/may2022/) shows the price of houses over the last decade.

We have seen houses selling at record rates, and each time we think it’s peaked we hear of a new high (I’m sure that real estate agents are having a great time, but also a very challenging time). We’ve also heard that people have a few hours to decide about buying a house, and that their first bid has to be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the asking price. This makes it a very challenging market to buy a house in.

I’ve heard that this trend is slowing down, but only time will tell. I am certain that house prices will remain very high, although they may not be increasing as much as they have been doing recently.

“Designated Sites” and the Cobequid Road Ball Field

At one end of the housing continuum is homelessness. This is a problem that we’ve had since I became elected, but it has become much more visible since about 2021.

HRM has recognized the challenge of this, and we are helping as we can.

One of the ways that we are helping is by providing supports, either directly or through service providers, with funding being provided either by HRM or from the province, to those that we know about who are homeless.

To help manage resources and supports, we have set up a number of “designated locations” as described in this report: https://cdn.halifax.ca/sites/default/files/documents/city-hall/regional-council/220614rc1515.pdf The criteria for these locations start on page 4.

HRM has designated the Cobequid Road ball field as one of these locations. When it was identified we recognized that it was not ideal, and so we kept on looking. We weren’t able to find anything else that might be suitable.

HRM is providing some supports – water, sanitary, power, showers, electricity, and transportation. We are also working with service providers who are providing all sorts of other support, including looking for places where these individuals could move to.

Beacon House / Metropolitan / St Elizabeth Seton Shelter

As preparation for Hurricane Fiona the province, in cooperation with Beacon House, established a shelter at the former St Elizabeth Seton church on Metropolitan Ave. This was operating as a temporary emergency shelter for that storm, and it was deemed as a success.

The management of the shelter has held a couple of public meetings to ensure that the concerns of those in the area have been heard and understood and addressed.

This shelter has since changed to operate 24/7 for 20 individuals and also has some one person shelters outside.

Homelessness Working Group

As the challenge of homelessness in Lower Sackville grew it needed a more structured approach.

In mid 2022 I called together a group that includes the management at Beacon House, the RCMP, and the HRM homelessness team. The goal of this group was to ensure that we have an understanding of each of the situations around Lower Sackville, that we identify any challenges and potential solutions, and that we are all on the same page with how to move forward.

We have continued to meet, regularly, and are continuing to help those individuals in Lower Sackville who are experiencing homelessness.

As we hear about problems, or as we identify problems, we are able to move towards a solution. In some cases this has meant additional supplies or electricity or visible screening for those at the ball field, and in some cases it has meant building lockers or establishing fencing at the Shelter.

What Happens Next?

I am committed to finding or developing real solutions to help the homeless issue.

New ideas have come forward about programs that have worked in other places, and that we may be able to implement here. One of them is a workable but temporary solution, and the other is a workable and permanent solution for families to get themselves out of homelessness.

I’m meeting with others to work through the details of those ideas and see if we are able to move forward with them.

What I would like to see:

  • Rent control is tied to something else, like CPI. We have to recognize that the cost of owning and maintaining an apartment has to be taken care of, and we have to provide incentives for landlords to build more buildings. One possibility is that rent could be capped at CPI + 2%. If CPI is 3.7% then your rent can increase a maximum of 5.7%.
  • Registration or regulation about short term rentals. Let’s assume that someone rents 7 apartments, and then has them as short term rentals. The apartments can be vacant 50% of the time, and they can still make money. At the same time they have taken 7 apartments out of the housing stock. I don’t know what this registration or regulation will look like, but I to think we need to have it.
  • Consideration for provincial housing. Housing co-ops were a great thing 50 years ago. There were challenges, but they provided affordable housing for many.
  • Consideration for tiny home communities. I’ve seen some models where tiny homes provide the right shelter for some people. It isn’t for everyone, but it can be for quite a few. With the right model, it can be a way to get some people in to permanent housing.
  • More apartments. At I’m writing this, there are 17 apartment buildings in Lower Sackville that are in some stage of construction or planning. These will take time to come together, but they will help out immensely.

I would also like us to recognize that none of this will be quick.

  • HRM does not have the mandate to take care of housing. As a direct result of this we don’t have a long term plan or the funding or expertise to manage it.
  • It is within HRM’s mandate to take care of planning and to help ensure that the environment is good for developers. This is where our focus should be.
  • We need more buildings. We need to grow the number of dwelling units in order to accommodate the population growth. This has a compounding effect on all of the other infrastructure that is required to accommodate this growth. HRM and the province needs to put together long term plans and strategies to take care of the projected population growth curve.
  • We need additional housing models. Some of these have proven to be effective in the past, and some have proven to be effective in other jurisdictions. We need to update the environment so that they can be used again.

Once again — none of these things is going to be quick.