DSD-20-006 - Affordable Housing Strategy Phase 2 - Housing Needs Assessment

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Date:January 24, 2020 To: Council and Corporate Leadership Team From: Justin Readman, General Manager, Development Services cc: Jeff Bunn, Deputy City Clerk Subject:DSD-20-006Affordable Housing Strategy Phase 2: Housing Needs Assessment Regarding Item #7 from the Community & Infrastructure Services Committee recommendation, we ask Council to approve the following revised recommendation: “THAT Council receive report DSD-20-006 (Affordable Housing Strategy Phase2: Housing Needs Assessment, AS AMENDED, and direct staff to proceed to Phase 3: Issues and Options using the Needs Assessment as part of the basis for stakeholder engagement.” Updated information has recently been received from CMHC, KW Realty Board and our year endthat necessitates revisions to the Housing Needs Assessment. Staff have made the changes and posted a revised Needs Assessment.Hard copies will be made available to members of Council.Changes (in bold) include: 1.RevisedKey Finding/Conclusion2–Housing in recent years has become increasingly unaffordable for an increasingly larger share of Kitchener’s population. Incomes are not keeping pace with rising costs of rental and ownership housing. Inflation increased by 18%, average rents have increased by 41%and average housing prices increased by 104% during the period 2009to 2019.Most of the increase in rents and housing prices occurred from2016 to2019. 2.RevisedKey Finding/Conclusion6–Existing rental units in the primary market are not meeting demand. Average rental vacancy rates are 2.2%, despite the additionof 400 new rental units in 2019.Market rental housing is becoming too expensive for an increasing number of people. Based on the number of rental households in core need paying more than 30% of income on housing costs,more than 9,300 new affordable rental housing units are needed for people with householdincomes under $63,000in Kitchener. (A new chart is includedto provide further details on rental housing affordability) 3.RevisedFigure 67: Average Re-sale Price of Houses and Income Required to Own – Updated to include information as of year end. The report previously noted information as at the end of Oct 2019. At 2019 year end,average housing prices had increased between $6,000 to $10,000 depending on housing form from the end of October to the end of December.The higher incomes required to afford the increased prices have been included in the revised figure. 4.RevisedFigure 73: Number of Housing Starts–The 2019 year end total of housing starts is 3,500 units.(The report previously noted 1,500 units as at theend of October 2019) 5.Edits and page renumberinghave been made.