Saint John needs to double housing starts to meet population growth targets

The City of Saint John says it needs to more than double the number of annual housing starts in order to meet population growth goals.

Brent McGoven, the city’s chief administrative officer, told council on Monday about the need to increase housing starts.

“Our city will need more than double our current output to get to 700 units a year, and that’s to really meet the needs of our council’s population growth targets of two per cent per year,” he said during a council meeting on Aug. 21.

Over the past five years, the city has averaged 270 units per year. About 226 have been created to date this year, with the municipality expecting  just over 300 housing starts in 2023.

The city’s vacancy rate or volume of apartments with 19 or more units is consistently below two per cent.

According to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the percentage of buildings with 20 to 49 units sits at 1.1 per cent and those with 50 to 199 units are at 1.5 per cent

In the second quarter of this year, Saint John was second only Moncton in the number of housing starts, according to the CMHC. Moncton saw 596 starts. Fredericton posted the lowest number, with 187.

Saint John, however, has the lowest average rate of rent, at $956. Moncton sits at $1,065 and Fredericton is around $1,147.

Andrew Reid, the city’s housing manager, said the goal has always been for the city to reach 85,000 people in 10 years. Last year, the city actually grew by 2.4 per cent, he said.

“If we’re looking for indicators for Saint John, our strategy has been really focusing on affordability… when it’s a supply and demand issue. When there is too much demand and not enough supply, it happens that those are less able to pay get affected the most,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Reid also said growth has only flourished in the last two years — amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — and building development takes investment and time.

“We also need to target every aspect of the housing spectrum,” he said. “We’re always looking at our targets, what we’re going to need, but it’s a target we know is reasonable.”

Saint John adopted a housing action plan last year, Reid said. However, methods such as inclusionary zoning — which Reid said isn’t exclusively off the table — aren’t being utilized yet.

Matthew Hayes, a founding member of the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights, said it is good to see levels of government trying to increase housing starts, but with affordability measures, it doesn’t mean much.

According to the Human Development Council, Saint John had the highest rate of overall poverty in the province at 18.5 per cent 2022.

It has twice the rate of poverty as its neighbouring municipalities of Quispamsis, Rothesay and Grand Bay-Westfield.

“A lot of the so-called affordable units that are being constructed with the federal government subsidies are not affordable,” Hayes said in an interview on Thursday. “They are the market median, and in Saint John, the market median has gone up 20 per cent. So that means those are rents now that aren’t affordable.

Hayes said another issue facing housing stock is the unregulated short-term rentals in the province.

There are nearly 200 short-term rentals in the Saint John-region, according to Hayes, adding there are no bylaws to control them, which further reduces the stock of available units in a housing crisis.

He said the blame for the situation lies at the feet of all levels of government, citing an ongoing resistance to rent control on the part of the provincial government.

“It’s absolutely appalling,” Hayes said.

Hayes said relying on for-profit developers to help increase affordable housing won’t work.

“We see sprawling development that reflects interests and abilities of local developers, which have not wanted to collaborate through municipal councils to build housing stock that would have more value both for residents and their owners over the long-term,” he said.