Web links from the presentation

Suggested Workshops

1. Project Financing

• How community groups can arrange financing for affordable housing projects they're willing to champion
  

2. Development / Planning Basics

• development approval process
• municipal planning processes
• Zoning, developers' responsibility, city process
• Financial restrictions and requirements for developers
• Cost of construction material and labour costs as well as other factors that impact development
  

3. Presentations on local initiatives and activities

• Both workshops and publications      

4. Local Inspirations  for Housing Affordability

• More of "this is what we could do" information, showing a variety of alternatives and where they would fit
• How to actually stimulate support for affordable housing at the community level
• What neighbourhoods and neighbourhood associations can do to make much of a difference to housing affordability
• Translate the information and motivation into action at the local level.

5. Housing Affordability from around the World

• Presenters with different concepts and models as to what is working else where in the world
• What ideas can be adapted to work in the CRD?

Suggested Activities

The feedback produced an outline of activities that the participates identified as needed in the community.  Some of the identified activities are already underway and others are under discussion.

1. Listing of available land and current zoning / proposed uses

• What kind of land is in Saanich’s land bank. One of the methods that should be used in order to provide land is to arrange leases which reflect the life of the built property.  In that way, the land ultimately reverts to the municipality but is very low cost or no cost to the builder
• What is available for development in each municipality?

2. Assist Neighbourhood / Community Associations with Visioning Exercises

• We need to have our own board development workshop before we do visioning with the neighbourhood - board members (of different ages, backgrounds, socio- economic status) are really hard to come by and creating a succinct team with each individual in specific roles has been a challenge.
• Incentives for neighbourhood associations to become more broad based
• Guiding the neighbourhood associations through the next steps of the evolutionary process with the assistance of Mark Hornell and Anne Topp and their staff

3. Create a forum or meeting places that last beyond one planning exercise

• Action and taking ownership of the neighbourhood is built through day to day interaction
• Empower everyday people to take ownership of their communities - planning is not just for City planners and self appointed Neighbourhood Association volunteers
• Neighbourhood Association should be challenged and required to outline how they will respond to the RHAS densification and other major strategies

4. Initiate a process to encourage the development of non-market housing.

• This process should be easy to go through and give sufficient incentives to make it preferable to the current economic motivation.

5. Seminars / Information Sessions for Service Groups

• Information as to where and how they can provide means to assist with this different types of entry level housing for young families, single adults, seniors

6. Series of Industry Related Seminars or Articles

• Need to continuously link back  to housing affordability to reinforce the seriousness of the issues in this region.
• Focused on realistic goals to help community associations work towards making improvements to their local area including land use and organizing a local annual festival/events
• How to communicated better with local government and possibly provincial and federal government
• Fundraising to make projects a reality

Suggested Networking

The feedback made it clear that the community needs additional opportunities and mechanisms to enhance community level networking.  Some initiatives are already in place with Sannich Community Association Network (SCAN) and further initiatives are being offered by the Office of Community Based Research at UVic.

1. Create Networking Opportunities

• Re-doing the Victoria Community Green Story Book to include more positive stories on housing and incorporating housing issues into the re-thinking of neighbourhood and regional on-line and print mapping will help
• Connect neighbourhoods to NGOs to learning institutions, to CRD and municipal gov’t.  Connect energy and learning from  our Vibrant City and Neighbourhood Series to this HAP project
• UVic is offering experts to help with networking as well as students to do research
• Sharing stories between neighbourhoods, mapping and supporting the city to do participatory planning and collaborative research

Suggested Information

The feedback from the conference participants indicated the need for additional information on the Housing Industry, Networking Information, as well as Community Involvement.  Information on these topics already exists in mixed media formats or is being created,  The appropriate links will be collected and added to the webpage.

1. The importance of public input in driving policy. 

• The bottom up message, the message of helping communities become empowered, to organize themselves' in order to present a unified voice at council meetings etc.

2. Examples of mixed housing

• Cost in dollars and  concrete examples, of developers who support mixed/affordable housing in the CRD and the GVRD etc
• Information what is being done in other cities and more examples of initiatives in the Greater Victoria area or up Island

3. Building Related Information

• How to calculate floor/space ratio
• How to calculate roof slopes
• How to “think metricâ€? (for us oldies)

4. Community Involvement

• How communities can be engaged in creating affordable housing
• How to address NIMBY syndrome
• Concrete examples of how changes were made - ie. what needed to be changed, who was engaged in the process and what roadblocks were overcome

5. Housing Affordability related information

• Assist the community to be open to rental units for students/seniors
• What is considered affordable?
• How community associations can assist with motivating parties to address the underlying causes and finding solutions.
• Where to find info on different financial aids that are offered
• How to go about learning what is necessary in purchasing verses renting verses sharing etc
• Exploring types of housing
• Rent controls and their long term effect on market affordability; do they help or hurt?
• Density; does it help affordability by increasing housing stock and creating vacancies at the low end or does it hinder affordability by driving up prices and creating demand from elsewhere?
• Is there a way to make housing affordable without making it more expensive at the higher end?
• Are subsidies really the only main answer?
• There is a gap between rental accommodation and condominium development. In addition, there is a gap between market and non-market housing. How do we overcome these gaps to encourage the development industry to consider a non-market housing component or whole project?

6. Costs and Components of Development

• It would be interesting to understand the forces at work through some numerical analysis. For example, over the last 15 years, housing costs have risen quicker than incomes for most people, making housing less affordable for most. If we took the median house or apartment/condo of 15 years ago which was worth "X" then and is worth "Y" now, how much of that growth in cost to "Y" is accounted for by land costs, by materials costs, by labour costs, by additional size or features, and by transaction or process costs? When we ask people to give up something to make housing more affordable, like donating the land, forgiving public taxes and fees, or volunteering their labour we are implicitly focusing on one or another of the potential cost drivers. What are their relative magnitudes? What can be done to moderate or mitigate them? Or do we have to go outside a market solution altogether if we can't convince one or more of the players to give up their piece of the action through moral suasion?
• Concrete suggestions on how what is needed to a)give developers the tools to build affordable housing, b) what is needed by local government to help build affordable housing