Exploring affordable housing through the private sector

Nuttall said council has made affordable housing a priority but added that partnerships with the private sector are essential to delivering new homes.

“One of the biggest challenges facing our city is affordability,” he said.

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“Too many residents are working hard, raising families and contributing to our city, but are struggling to find a home they can afford, and that’s why council has made affordable housing a priority in the City of Barrie. Government can’t build housing alone,” Nuttall said. “Our role is to create the conditions for our partners to build homes faster and to work with those partners to deliver solutions that make a real difference for our residents.”

Barrie is supporting the project through its housing incentive programs, which are intended to encourage the construction of affordable housing as part of new residential developments.

City officials say the development reflects Barrie’s broader strategy to increase the housing supply while expanding access to affordable homes for residents.

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Mapleview Community Church initiated the project as part of its commitment to supporting vulnerable members of the community. Announcing the development last year, Pastor Jay Davis said the initiative reflects the church’s mission of walking alongside people in need while helping them move toward healing, stability and permanent housing.

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“When the private sector is ready to build, our job is to help that get underway, and that’s exactly what this announcement here represents.”

Nixon, whose ward includes the downtown, said adding more residents will strengthen the neighbourhood and help small business thrive.

“Ward 2 has always been the heart of Barrie. It’s where people come to live, work, enjoy our waterfront, support local businesses, and experience everything our city has to offer,” he said.

“As our downtown continues to grow, it’s important that we create opportunities for more people to call this neighbourhood home. Projects like this help strengthen the vibrancy of our downtown.”

Black Creek Group founder and managing partner Nicholas Francis said the development has overcome significant economic challenges throughout the planning process.

“Over the past four years, through major market turbulence, about every other obstacle that you could throw in front of a project, we’re here today to celebrate what’s going to be an amazing addition to the downtown Barrie community,” he said.

George Misik, vice-president of financing at Peakhill Capital, said Barrie continues to be an attractive community for investment.

“We continue to support its growth. Not only is it one of the places to grow designated by the Province of Ontario, but it is a wonderful place to be,” he said.

The announcement follows several other affordable housing projects approved in Barrie, including 38 units at 53 Coulter St., 31 units at 375 Yonge St. and 46 units at 52 Lakeside Terr.

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Rain Ready Ottawa is a program aimed at protecting waterways by awarding rebates to residents who undertake actions on their property that reduce the harmful impacts of stormwater runoff.

City staff explained the reason for expanding the program.

“[The existing rebate program] is one of our most effective tools,” they said. “Council directed staff to explore a low-rise MURB rebate when the RRO was approved in 2024.” 

The proposed program expansion would apply only to low-rise MURBs (buildings under three storeys), including cooperative housing, condominiums, rental housing, and affordable housing. Rebates for MURBs could amount to as much as $30,000. 

Although the new rebate stream will be funded out of the existing program budget of $500,000, with $100,000 specifically allocated to low-rise MURBs, city staff clarified that availability of the existing stream for private residents is not expected to be impacted. 

Councillor Theresa Kavanagh (Bay) expressed her support for the expansion, but wondered about how this might impact the existing program’s capacity. 

“I think we have to grow it. I worry that we have a backlog, and we as a council have to look at the budget,” she said. “Because this program should be expanded. It’s been a huge success.” 

City staff clarified that there is no backlog currently. “We don’t have a backlog when it comes to rebate application itself… The intent of this is to help us further maximize the budget that we have right now.” 

The committee approved the motion, which will be taken to the next city council meeting on May 27.

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Dr. Tim Aubry is a professor in the university’s school of psychology and senior researcher at the ​​Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services. He’s been studying homelessness, its causes and the possible solutions for decades, and he says transitional housing facilities that provide long-term housing options on a temporary basis could be perpetuating the problems, despite receiving support from the community and City.

Aubry was part of the research group that studied the Housing First (HF) approach over a decade ago and conducted a report based on engagement with 2,000 people. According to this research, Aubry says the most effective approach is to house people — permanently — and follow up with support and resources. Unlike transitional housing, which has been advertised across the country as a necessary in-between step, HF does not have a time limit for how long people can stay.

To address the ongoing homelessness crisis, the City of Ottawa has opened a new transitional housing facility that will provide temporary housing for up to 140 people. The city has leased the building at 230 Queen St. for a 10-year term to establish a transitional housing facility that will provide “temporary” accommodation for people experiencing homelessness and connect them with employment and housing resources.

“This is technically considered a shelter. It’s not permanent housing, so it sits within the shelter system,” said Kale Brown, director of housing with the city. “The way our system works in terms of who ends up going to this building is you’re assessed by your needs and then we determine a placement, working with our various shelter partners.”

The Queen Street facility will focus on newcomers to Canada but can serve anyone who meets the criteria, Brown said, and will offer supportive temporary accommodations, the building includes kitchens, dining areas, washrooms, showers, laundry facilities, lounge areas, and dedicated rooms for meetings and workshops.

Clients will also have access to settlement and employment support, housing search case management, short-term mental health crisis workers, and weekly life skills workshops

This is the second transitional housing facility for single adults in Ottawa — the other, St-Joseph Transitional Housing Program in the east end, exclusively serves newcomers seeking asylum in Canada who are experiencing homelessness.

While emergency shelters like the Ottawa Mission and Shepherds of Good Hope aim to shelter people for only 30 days, they can stay in transitional housing for up to a year until they “get on their feet”, said Brown.

The “Housing First” program and research followed 2,000 individuals as well as hundreds of service providers across Canada over two years. Across all cities, HF participants obtained housing and retained their housing at a much higher rate than the treatment as usual (TAU) group.

In the last six months of the study, 62 per cent of HF participants were housed all of the time, 22 per cent some of the time, and 16 per cent none of the time. In comparison, 31 per cent of TAU participants were housed all of the time, 23 per cent some of the time, and 46 per cent none of the time.

“The idea is to rehouse people without condition, so they don’t have to go through any kind of transitional process,” Aubry told Ottawa Compass. “This approach targets people with histories of chronic homelessness, particularly histories of mental health problems and often with addiction.”

Transitional models have been useful in the past, he said, and have been used for decades to help people transition from living in psychiatric hospitals, for example, to living independently. 

The Queen Street housing consists of sleeping “pods” with shared living spaces, allowing some independence with plenty of support and resources. But there isn’t a lot of privacy — due to the layout of the building, the pods don’t have floor-to-ceiling walls.

“What we’re seeing here in the city, I think it’s really just more emergency shelter space, just with sort of a different model,” Aubry said.

The Queen Street facility is geared towards newcomers to Canada, as is a facility on St. Joseph Boulevard, and in these cases, Aubry said transitional housing could help as people get on their feet.

But in the context of chronic homelessness, it might be a different conversation.

“Housing First involved housing and support in line with people’s needs. So it can be quite intensive, but the actual rental housing is a big problem,” said Aubry. “Many people who are homeless are on social benefits here in Ontario, and they don’t have enough money to pay the rent in the private market.”

Through Housing First programs, people can receive a housing supplement that Aubry said would “ideally” pay more than 30 per cent of rent. The problem is exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing in Ontario and extremely low vacancy rates.

The report found that HF approaches resulted in savings over time, with the most significant for the participants with highest costs at entry.

For this group, the intervention cost was $19,582 per person per year on average, and over the two-year period following study entry, every $10 invested in HF services resulted in an average savings of $21.72, the report stated.

When the report was first released, the federal government mandated communities across the country to invest in Housing First initiatives. However, in 2017, the Liberals released a new national housing strategy that placed the focus on social housing.

“There was nothing about Housing First in the strategy, so things have stalled,” said Aubry.

“If you look at the last six or seven years, we’ve grown some of the HF programs, but we really haven’t seen any kind of scaling up of them, despite the fact that we know that chronic homelessness has increased significantly,” he continued.

“We have a lot more visible homelessness, a lot more people unsheltered — they’re living in encampments, and they’re really not tied to any kind of system. And this is the kind of approach that could address that.”

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The report from Rentals.ca and Urbanation found average asking rents sat at $2,193 for September, marking the fifth straight month that the annual rate has slowed from May’s nine per cent growth.

“Rents in Canada are increasing at their slowest pace in nearly three years, largely the result of foreign student enrolments dropping by roughly a half from their record highs, with the impact felt most in B.C. and Ontario,” said Urbanation president Shaun Hildebrand in a press release.

“Meanwhile, smaller, more affordable markets continue to see strong upward pressure on rents as demand shifts to less expensive parts of the country.”

Ontario and B.C. recorded the most significant annual rent declines. Average asking rents for purpose-built and condominium apartments were down 4.3 per cent to $2,380 in Canada’s largest province, while the west coast province recorded a 3.2 per cent drop to $2,570.

Rents surged 23.5 per cent to an average of $1,378 in Saskatchewan, making it the fastest-growing province in the country in terms of asking price.

By city, apartment rents declined in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal, while Ottawa saw a slight increase.

Vancouver’s 9.5 per cent drop brought average rents down to $3,023 in September, marking the 10th consecutive month of year-over-year decreases.

In Toronto, Canada’s second most expensive market for renters, average rents declined 8.1 per cent to $2,668.

The report highlighted Lloydminster as one of Canada’s most affordable markets with average apartment rents of $1,178 — a figure up 27.5 per cent from last year. Other affordable markets experiencing significant growth included Saskatoon, where average prices rose 24.8 per cent to $1,428, and Quebec City, where rents jumped 24 per cent to $1,758.

Based on the report, the average asking rent for a one-bedroom unit in Canada was $1,916 in September, up 2.1 per cent from a year ago. The average asking price for a two-bedroom unit was $2,279, up 2.6 per cent.

Overall, asking rents for purpose-built rental apartments in September rose 5.4 per cent compared with a year earlier to reach an average of $2,138.

Meanwhile, condominium apartment rents, which averaged $2,296, were down 1.7 per cent.

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The federal government’s latest announcement about the addition of 14 properties to the Canada Public Land Bank brings the total up to 70 properties that the government has identified as being suitable to support housing.

The answer seems simple: the city needs housing, and the feds have properties in prime locations that aren’t being used. Why not turn the former offices into housing units?

But not all buildings are suitable for conversion, says Kevin Morris, chief financial officer at JBPA Developments Inc. JBPA has been at the forefront of the conversion conversation, having converted office buildings to residential at three properties: 169 Lisgar St., 170 Metcalfe St. and 341 MacLaren St.

The latest project underway with JBPA is 200 Elgin St., a building owned by District Realty. JBPA has been working to encourage the private sector to consider converting their unused or unleashed spaces into housing in addition to government properties.

And while the government’s disposal list is a step in the right direction, Morris said the buildings are not automatically suitable to be converted into housing. There are a variety of factors to determine whether or not a property can be successfully converted.

“Every conversion is unique, because every building is unique,” said Morris. “Only about a quarter of buildings that are identified as potential conversions actually do make it as actual conversions.”

So what are the ideal features a building should have for office-to-residential conversion?

Firstly, the layout of office buildings tends to differ from residential, Morris explained, which can become complicated when creating floor plans for residential units. For this reason, square buildings are not usually well-suited to hold apartments.”

“Apartment buildings are longer and more narrow. Some office buildings are really big, so then the apartments themselves would become really long and narrow,” he explained. “And this is somebody’s home. This wouldn’t feel very homey; it feels like you’re living in a long, narrow hallway.”

The location of the building within the city is also a factor, he explained. When considering a building for conversion, he said he looks at the community around the property, including access to transit, grocery stores, medical facilities, and other amenities nearby.  

“Like anybody’s home, you want to have a community around it,” said Morris. “Converting the office building is one part of it, but having all those other things that need to be part of a community for people also needs to be addressed at the same time.”

Many other features of a building that JBPA looks at are “building-specific”, like whether or not the elevator is positioned in the middle of the building, if there is space for parking, and where amenity spaces like fitness rooms and other facilities could be built. 

“Any building is a complicated machine. There’s lots of things that go into building any complicated machine, and you only build that machine in one direction, so it is complicated no matter which way you go about it,” said Morris. 

So is it actually more efficient to convert, rather than starting from scratch?

“Depends on the client,” Morris says. Converting a property saves concrete, which is a carbon-intensive process, so reusing the existing material can be more environmentally- and fiscally-responsible.

Efficiency also comes into play with red tape and the processing times for properties on a municipal level, he added. While it might be attractive to purchase a property with the aim of converting, itve could take around five years from acquiring the building until it can actually be converted, he explained. 

In some cases, “you may as well buy new” after investing in a vacant building. So whenever possible, if the City can work to speed up the approval process, he said it will encourage people to invest in a conversion project. 

Although JBPA has been trying to get private property owners involved, there are some possible candidates for conversions in the Land Bank, said Morris, that are located in prime areas downtown and rectangular in shape. Some, however, just aren’t well-located enough to quality — “Again, the building is only one part. The community around it is also important.

“I think the intention is there, but I think without some meaningful ways to accelerate it, it may not happen as fast as people want,” he explained.

Ultimately, he said he hopes property owners will at least consider evaluating whether their buildings are suitable for conversion before starting anew. And with extra support and boosts to the current timelines for approvals, he said the city’s conversions can be heading in the right direction.

“When people are motivated to come up with a solution, things will happen. I think what I’ve seen these last few months of people in Ottawa, the federal government, and the City is people want to have a meaningful solution,” Morris said. “So we may stumble a little bit, but with some creativity and wanting to do the right thing, I think a solution will be found.”

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