Next week’s housing summit in Haliburton County will mark the third time folks have come together, listened to speakers, chatted amongst themselves, gotten somewhat fired up, and walked away to do very little.
To be fair, that is not due to apathy. There has been a lot of chatter in our County about how a lack of housing – especially affordable housing – is holding us back. We cannot attract professionals, or other workers. Our best and brightest leave for better housing pastures.
Nor is it completely due to lack of action. For example, when the province passed Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, our townships made planning changes to allow, for example, secondary units on a property, for aging parents, children seeking independence, or working professionals looking for somewhere to live.
However, there has been very little uptake across the County. In part it may be because the word has not gotten out. More likely, it’s due to high buildings costs.
People might like the idea of plopping a second home on their rural lands, but when they begin to crunch the numbers, they find the cost is prohibitive, especially when factoring in the increased price of wells and septic systems, which can run around $50,000. I suspect there is also an inherent fear around becoming a landlord to an unknown tenant.
That puts the building pressure on developers, and not-for-profits such as Places for People. However, municipal governments can help them to help all of us.
I interviewed the keynote speakers for next week’s housing summit in Minden; Claire de Souza, the housing development coordinator for the Town of Collingwood, and Joe Gallivan, the director of planning and economic development for the County of Frontenac.
These two areas are facing similar challenges to Haliburton County and arguably taking greater strides to move the needle.
Our politicians often cite a lack of developable land in the County. De Souza has heard the same argument in her neck of the woods. So, they are doing an inventory of lots formerly deemed undevelopable due to size and frontage, to see if they can get some out-of-the-box ideas from their development community on how to use them. It might mean building up instead of across. For this though, neighbours have to let go of their not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) mentality and conclude that despite their personal aversion, a small three-storey apartment or condo actually helps the County.
Same with encouraging developers to build multi-unit residential with communal servicing. Why would the County and its towns not look into this? They only need glance at Frontenac County’s website or come listen to Gallivan to find a template that could be adopted for our needs. It might take eight years, but what do we have to lose?
I get it. Change is hard, but the cost of not changing is far worse for the future of our County. It means politicians and residents have to rethink conventional views about housing. Gone should be one residence on a large tract of rural land. Gone should be ideas we cannot have anything other than a bungalow on our street. We still want to protect our environment, and our lakes, at all costs but something has to give. Our hope is that some movement can occur between next Thursday and the next housing summit in the fall of 2025.
