An attainable housing strategy for Northern Bruce Peninsula is likely going to be brought to council later this month.
Attainable Housing Task Force Committee member and Coun. Laurie Golden says the strategy will be reviewed at a committee meeting Thursday and then later brought to council for consideration.
This follows a summary of the strategy prepared by a consultant last month to the task force.
The strategy identified four key gaps in housing the municipality. These include an overall lack of rental housing, a mismatch between household sizes and dwelling sizes, insufficient water and sewer servicing, and development standards and policy regime are hampering housing development.
It also says a seasonal resident housing demand is a challenge to attainable housing in the municipality as well having a development capacity that may not align with growth targets.
Draft recommendations were made which include creating a strategy to build water and sewer infrastructure in Tobermory and Lion’s Head, introducing local development charges for community services, creating a strategy to create “non-market” attainable housing, introducing local development charges for affordable and attainable housing, creating an organization to manage the attainable housing, examine other revenue sources for attainable housing, and work with the county on rural development standards.
“The report did a lot of comparisons to other areas and what’s worth in places like Whistler, and we are not there of course, but we have our own unique situation but it certainly doesn’t hurt to look at other areas, what works, what hasn’t, what’s the similarities, and just try to get everybody on board for that and it may take a while,” says Golden.
Golden adds having a strategy is the right step to addressing attainable housing the municipality.
“You do need some sort of strategy to finance this. We are a pretty small municipality and we had to take the reins on this and we did create this task force because it is such an issue and impacts our community,” says Golden.