Bruce County Taking Steps to Address Housing Shortage
by Bob Montgomery
Bruce County's Commissioner of Community Development says the county is taking a number of steps to address the county's housing issues.
Claire Dodds says the Commissioner of Community Development Office is a relatively new concept and the focus of the office is to work on a number of strategic projects. One of those projects is to look at the supply and affordability of housing in the county. Dodds says the team she leads includes land use planners, economic development, their inter-governmental affairs staff along with their human services staff, and their housing services assistant manager. They're currently looking at tools that are available to them through the county, as well as through their municipalities, and trying to figure out if there are things they could be doing to influence the housing supply and affordability in the county.
“Some of the things I can highlight that we have done in 2023: we have a really great website to help homeowners and developers understand the issues locally around affordability. We built what's called the Affordability Toolkit which sits on our county website and we have three different areas of information. One is Affordability 101, which gives a break down of affordable housing information by each municipality. Another section is directed primarily at developers which is about building multiple units and ground oriented housing and helping developers understand the need in the community. The third one involves some of the positive changes in provincial legislation that helps facilitate the development of what's called additional dwelling units. So a residential property owner in a serviced community that has water and sewer would be able to develop up to three additional units on that property”, said Dodds.
She added, a lot of people are interested but don't know where to start, so they've put together a comprehensive guide, with a check list, and the information they'll need to develop an additional dwelling unit. Dodds says 82% of their building stock across the county consists of single detached dwellings. Those tend to have been developed at a time when the lot sizes were a little bit larger and additional dwelling units is an effective way of creating some additional housing. That could include an apartment inside a home, or a detached additional housing unit in someone's backyard that can provide housing at a more affordable price and still blend in with the rest of the neighbourhood.
Dodds says the county has been able to get some funding that will allow them to conduct a pilot study of the process involved in developing an additional dwelling unit and then get out into the community and conduct some workshops. They're looking at how, not only developers, but individual homeowners can offset some affordability challenges in purchasing a home by having a rental unit on their property and being part of the affordability solution.
