The following was new business brought forward at tonight's Owen Sound City Council meeting by Councillor Jon Farmer.
A recent CBC article titled Why Rent is so Expensive in Three Canadian Cities That Aren’t Vancouver or Toronto, listed average rents for a two bedroom apartment in Calgary ($1,466 / month), Kitchener / Cambridge / Waterloo ($1,469), and Halifax ($1,449). Those rents are cheaper than what we see available for Owen Sound.
I would like to note that the City has been working on various policies to address housing supply including the recent amendment to the zoning by laws to allow additional residential units, and a pending report on the Development of an Action Plan to Promote and Facilitate Attainable and Affordable Housing.
That said, we have more work to do; the City can’t address this issue alone. It will take collaboration between private and public and non profit and for profit sectors to make sure that we have enough housing and that the housing we have is attainable and protected as much as possible from the inflationary pressures of the for profit housing market.
There is a group of our neighbours working under the banner of the Institute of South Georgian Bay advocating for among other things social financing models for housing and development.
Marilyn Struthers from our area represented the institute on a Panel at the Rural Ontario Municipalities (ROMA) conference and a recording of that presentation is now online thanks to TVO.
For folks in the community who are interested in these issues, I highly recommend checking out both that conversation and the work of the Institute of South Georgian Bay as well as the Grey Bruce Poverty Task Force.
We need everyone’s help if we’re going to realize the dream of an attainable and adequate housing market in Owen Sound. I’d like to congratulate the local folks working on that issue and add for additional business that we have more to do.
