With the approval of the tiny homes conceptual design at council Feb. 11, residents raised further questions about affordable housing and its role in Okotoks.
A potential addition to the affordable housing supply in Okotoks is the Homestead project, a tiny homes ecovillage slotted for construction in the D’Arcy neighbourhood. The ecovillage will have 42 homes, and the entire project will feature 7.2 acres of community space.
The conceptual designs were passed at council, going into land lease negotiations before the final go/no-go vote in the next few months.
Okotoks resident Russ Wheatley expressed concerns about the project at the meeting.
“Our concern should be what is best for our citizens, not the fact that a proposal has come with some extra financing and a chance to show our environmental awareness and sensitivity,” said Wheatley.
Wheatley asked council to clarify what problem the Homestead project is aiming to address.
“A short while ago I talked to a fellow who told me, because he was changing his job, he could no longer afford his mortgage so he sold his house and located a low-cost rental accommodation for his family,” he said. “Will the project accommodate the needs of people like this fellow and other families with incomes less than $50,000?
“Does Okotoks need to be pioneering a sustainable ecovillage of tiny homes as a model or a template for other municipalities to replicate? Do we have that kind of money for such a long-term project, considering what lies ahead in our overall community development?”
The ecovillage project was moved to the D’Arcy land after the initial proposal of Kinsmen Park was met with community criticisms last year, regarding the central location and the loss of green space. However, Wheatley remains concerned for the maintenance of the project.
“If my math is correct, the seven auxiliary buildings total 30,000 square feet. This is larger than the Foothills Community Centre,” he said. “How is the operation and maintenance of these buildings to be funded? We aren’t doing that well with the community centre.”
Wheatley asked council to assess other options for affordable housing to ensure the Homestead project proposal is the best option for the community, in contrast with conventional home designs.
However, council has been and continues to be looking into the affordable housing issue in Okotoks since last year, following the creation of the Affordable Housing Task Force and the subsequent report provided to council on Nov. 13. The report highlighted the housing crisis in Okotoks for low-income people.
The report stated rents and utilities in Okotoks being 24 per cent higher than the provincial average, and that 45 per cent of Okotoks renters are spending more than 30 per cent of their income on rent and utilities, the standard benchmark for affordability.
Of that 45 per cent, 19 per cent are spending greater than 50 per cent of their income, making an urgent short-term need for 294 affordable rental units, and overall 689 units to address the entire 45 per cent.
The task force report said that more rental units are needed immediately, and cannot wait for completion of the Municipal Development Plan and land-use bylaw work. The report suggested legalization of secondary suites and backyard/detached suites in laneway and non-laneway housing, co-housing opportunities in single-family dwellings, and possible parking relaxations among other suggestions.
Roy Steinhauer, a past member of the municipal planning committee, was also at the Feb. 11 meeting. He had concerns about the task force report and the direction council was taking.
“It appears to me that if the decision by council is to change the rules and regulations in the R1 zoned neighbourhoods to allow for low income housing, it would be made on economics and social justice pressure without considering the engineering and planning that went into the design of the neighbourhood,” he said.
Criticizing the plan for focusing on the low-income people that need the housing, rather than considering the people that would be carrying the load of work in the form of neighbourhood buildings, traffic flow, and congestion, Steinhauer felt as though the plan did not offer enough alternatives for correcting the issue, calling the report a bit weak.
“There’s a lot of data with no work plan. I found it does not address the urgent short-term need for 294 units, I mean this [the report] is all long-term stuff,” Steinhauer said.
Shawn Rose, chair of the Task Force, said that the concerns expressed by Steinhauer were valid, but felt they weren't entirely based on the Task Force's findings or recommendations, and conclusion seemed to have been jumped to.
"Our task force is essentially a think tank comprised of subject-matter experts and concerned citizens. We do not create policy, and we do not focus our attention on any specific projects or properties, with the obvious likelihood that many of our members, who are active in the housing industry, would enter into a conflict of interest situation," said Rose. "We simply provide advice to Council based on the consensual recommendations that our task force arrives at.
"Once our recommendations are in Council's hands, it is entirely incumbent upon them to take our advice, or to ignore it, and any policy that might develop from that advice would go through the standard administrative channels."
Rose stressed that the recommendation regarding the reevaluation of the definition of a 'secondary suite' or 'studio suite', was one that the task force felt was low-hanging fruit. After reviewing housing affordability assessments and reports from dozen of similar municipalities across the country, the common feature was the need for bylaw review.
“The one feature that stood out, almost without exception, was the request for an immediate review, and possible expansion of, the respective municipality's secondary suite bylaws,” said Rose. The current bylaws in Okotoks are very restrictive according to Rose, so uptake of secondary suites has been near non-existent.
Adjustment to the municipality’s bylaws is considered high benefit and low risk. This is due to the lack of new infrastructure needed, so turnaround would be significantly faster than new constructions. Secondary suites also provide financial opportunities for existing homeowners.
“As a result of the revised mortgage rules put in place in 2018, many homeowners will face challenges renewing their mortgage under the current regulations, possibly being forced to sell or find alternative lending sources in order to stay in their homes,” he said. “A legal secondary suite's revenue can be claimed towards their qualification requirement.”
As for Steinhauer's concern that the recommendations focused on only specific R1 housing, Rose said that isn't the case, but was merely an example of the bylaws that need to be adjusted. Under current bylaws, suites can be ruled illegal for being too big or having a second bedroom, which is what the task force wants to change.
"Okotoks currently has about 6,700 R1 properties," said Rose. "If one in 23 single-family homeowners built a secondary suite, that would satisfy the entire requirement for approximately 300 new suites to theoretically bring the number of available suites to a level that no one has to pay more than 50% of their income for housing. If that ratio rose to one in ten, that would satisfy the full requirement to bring Okotoks into line with the provincial average for access to rental accommodations, with little-to-no new construction or infrastructure."
"It would be unreasonably optimistic to assume that we could hit a ratio of one in ten, or even one in 23, but I can tell you that, personally, if two of my twenty closest neighbours had secondary suites, I probably wouldn't even notice," he said.
Following Steinhauer’s delegation, Coun. Tanya Thorn clarified that the council has not approved any changes to the R1 districts, but rather has asked administration to explore the possibility.
“Anything that comes forward would follow a public hearing concept, it would come through as a land-use bylaw change, and that would be a public hearing that would be publicized for anybody that had pros and cons against it to come in and speak to council directly on that before any decision would be made,” Thorn said.
Update: This story has been updated with information from the Affordable Housing Task Force in relation to the concerns expressed at the council meeting.
