Mission council received its quarterly update on the city’s Affordable Housing Strategy (AHS) at the final meeting of the year on Dec. 19 and the city is not seeing progress in key areas.
“The actual housing type needed most in Mission is not being built,” the quarterly report said.
Rental housing availability and affordability emerged as the most critical areas to address in the city’s 2020 Housing Needs Assessment, according to the report.
“To build enough units to make a positive change to the housing market in Mission, 412 new units are needed on an annual basis,” the report said.
A large portion of the new units need to be affordable rental units – where the cost of rent is less than 30 per cent of the household income (before taxes), the report says. However, single family dwellings that require a household income of just under $200,000 per year continue to dominate construction.
Mike Dickinson, Manager of Long Range Planning and Special Projects with the City of Mission, and Dena Kae Beno presented the AHS quarterly report to council and answered questions. The update included details on 13 key strategies identified as most impactful to improving housing conditions in Mission of the 23 listed within the AHS.
“I think the big thing about the program is trying to understand exactly what’s out there in order to offer policies and bylaws that really work,” Dickinson said. “I think that’s been the biggest challenge is we don’t understand how big the issue is for us to respond to it.”
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Several city departments are working on strategies to improve housing, such as streamlining application processes, tending to partnerships, acquiring units for SARA for Women, and developing policies, plans and programs in areas of secondary suites, city financial tools, and safe and secure housing.
“It takes multiple city divisions and continued additional resources to address the complex challenge of increasing affordable housing in Mission,” the quarterly report read.
The AHS aims for initial implementation efforts on the top 13 strategies over the course of three years, provided sufficient resources are made available through Council.
“Ensuring that the city has at least a one-for-one replacement strategy [is important],” Beno said. “For every one rental unit that may be demolished or converted, there’s at least one rental or affordable housing unit being developed to replace that last unit.”
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Supporting additional housing for SARA For Women is also a pillar of the city’s affordable housing strategy. According to the AHS, 321 women and 421 children escaping violence were turned away in 2021 from transition homes due to a lack of capacity and 100 units are needed by next year.
The city is collaborating with SARA and BC Housing on two sites – Santa Rosa in the downtown core and a project west of the downtown. After SARA didn’t receive financing for the Santa Rosa redevelopment project from the CMHC Women and Children’s Shelter and Transitional Housing Initiative, the organization is exploring alternative financial options.
The report says that the city will continue to working closely with SARA during the exploratory phase. BC Housing decided to put the west of downtown project on hold to focus on the Santa Rosa site, given an unsuccessful CMHC grant application and the technical challenges of developing the west site.
Addressing the backlog for permit applications is also a priority for the city. The building department added two new positions in 2022 for a plan checker and plan checking assistant.
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The added staff and updated submission review processes helped to chip away at the backlog. The city says streamlining actions are underway to help reduce the processing times for building permits for new residential units.
Councillor Carol Hamilton voiced concerns with the wait times after speaking to developers in Mission.
“Some of the reasons that these people are being given is that we’re understaffed, we’re busy, people didn’t show up for work,” Hamilton said. “That’s the last thing that we should be telling our customers — they don’t want to hear that. They just want to know that their applications are being dealt with.”
Mission’s director of development services Dan Sommer said the stresses on the building department are apparent that processing applications takes time.
The city also has plans to create an Affordable Housing Reserve Fund (AHRF) to collect and disburse money to affordable housing construction and existing affordable housing preservation. Revisions to the density bonus program and Community Amenity Contribution (CAC) policy could also be in store, with the CAC rate increasing for each residential unit from $2,815 to $7,200.
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dillon.white@missioncityrecord.com
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