Huron County Working to meet the Need for More Housing
by Bob Montgomery
Huron County's Planning & Development Director, Sandra Weber, brought county councillors up to date recently on their efforts to address the housing shortage in the county.
Weber says housing continues to be a top priority for the county, both in terms of more units and also the need for a wider range of units to meet the needs of all members of the community. Weber says the departments of planning, property and social services and economic development are working along with their municipal partners to address the need for housing. Weber says current steps to address the problem include the county's Emergency Cold Weather Shelter, housing stability supports and homeless prevention programs. The county currently has three new Huron County housing builds underway. Those include a twenty unit apartment building under construction in Exeter, two new triplexes that were recently completed in Goderich and a forty-unit apartment building in Goderich with construction expected to start in 2024. Weber says they've also worked on updates to planning documents to allow more housing to be built as of right, so without the need for a planning application. Weber says they're also working on a communications project to showcase the different types of housing forms being built across Huron County.
Weber says addressing the housing issue clearly includes the need for both more housing units to be built but also a range in the types of housing to be built. She says that would include things like townhouses and apartments or other rental units and they need that wide range of options to meet the needs of the community. In the past, there has been some resistance to any form of housing other than single family homes but Weber says they have been doing some communications work to show people what those different forms of housing might look like in their community and what density-done-well might look like. She says the conceptual drawings have clearly demonstrated that higher density homes can blend in with existing homes in a community.
