Cornerstone Community Association Durham Inc., Barry Bryan Associates Oshawa, Ontario
a ffordabl e h ou s ing A Primer on
Affordable Housing
CREDIT: BARRY BRYAN ASSOCIATES
The Role of Transportation Professionals
BY SUZANNE SWANTON AND TIM WELCH TIM WELCH CONSULTING INC (TWC)
While communities across Canada rally to build affordable rental housing to respond to the housing and homelessness crisis, it is important to understand how affordable housing is defined in practice, the barriers to creating affordable housing, and how transportation engineers and planners, along with other municipal staff, can assist in its development. This article focuses on legislation and policy in Ontario but has applications for transportation professionals across Canada.
What do we mean by affordable rental housing? The guiding definition for affordable rental and ownership housing in Ontario can be found in the Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) 2020, which sets the rules for land use planning in the province. The PPS 2020 defines affordable rental housing as: • A unit for which the rent does not exceed 30% of gross annual household income for low and moderate income households; or
23 TRANSPORTATION TALK | WINTER 2020-2021
• a unit for which the rent is at or below the average market rent of a unit in the regional market area. The PPS 2020 defines low and moderate income households as households with incomes in the lowest 60 percent of the income distribution for renter households in the regional market area. Typically, most new affordable housing constructed by not-for-profit organizations charge rents below Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) average market rents.
Who is building affordable rental housing and for whom? For those community organizations on the front lines, the housing and homelessness crisis is not new. Non-profit housing providers (including nonprofit co-operatives) have traditionally built rental housing for low and moderate income households. Starting in the 1990s, two decades of austerity
