A lack of affordable housing is an issue impacting Canadians from coast to coast.
As a result, the federal government launched the National Housing Strategy, which aims to diminish homelessness rates and assist first-time homebuyers.
However, affordable housing options for society’s most marginalized people is being pushed further out of reach, says a retired planning professor. Jill Grant, co-author of a recent article in the International Journal of Housing Policy, helped create an in-depth analysis of the significant decline in rooming houses throughout the urban centres of Dartmouth and Halifax.
“(People) may be on disability, they may be on social assistance, they may be trying to re-establish themselves after coming out of an institution of some sort, they may be immigrants, and so a single room in a shared home where they’re sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities is one of the most affordable options.”
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She says the changing landscape of city neighbourhoods — in particular, the impact of gentrification — was the driving force behind the review.
“Gentrification is a kind of neighbourhood change where we see a neighbourhood go from being either mixed-income or sometimes low-income and then transitioning fairly rapidly to being higher income,” Grant said.
Grant says rooming houses used to be common in neighbourhoods throughout Dartmouth and Halifax.
“A report from the City of Halifax in 2001 said there were about 55 rooming houses in Dartmouth and now almost all of them are gone. There’s only a few left,” she said.
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For people trying to survive on limited incomes, Grant says rooming houses provided some of the most affordable options for those who can’t get into public housing due to long wait-lists.
According to the article, rooming houses became more stigmatized and marginalized as the urban middle class grew and sought home ownership.
Paired with new developments, which often lead to high rental prices, Grant feels increasing density in urban centres is pushing people out of their own communities into areas where they have limited access to resources.
“Buildings are being torn down so that more units can put on the same lot, but the units that are being built are not as affordable as the units that are displaced,” Grant said.
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Increasing density in Halifax and Dartmouth is the goal of new planning and development. However, city planners say affordable housing is an issue that they’re working to address through a new planning strategy that has been in the works since 2015.
“The Centre Plan is really about creating complete and inclusive communities for all by providing for more development potential in the right locations, service close to transit and a broad variety of housing forms,” said Kasia Tota, a principal planner with the Halifax Regional Municipality. “We feel we will add to the supply and range of housing options.”
Tota says the new planning strategy includes working with the Housing and Homelessness Partnership to develop new strategies to increase affordable housing options.
“By clarifying planning rules we are developing a whole new framework where there will be a lot more predictability of where new growth can go. We are enabling new forms of housing, focusing particularly on mid-rise forms but some higher-density forms as well, so tower sites,” she said.
Tota adds that new density bonusing initiatives are a tool the city is using to incentivize developers to increase public benefits like affordable housing in exchange for increased density.
The Centre Plan is in its final stages of completion and aims to be completed by the end of 2019.
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