Hamilton mayor talks housing affordability, Engage Hamilton

Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger joined us this morning with an update on the city.

A report came out last week from the province on housing affordability. It highlights expert recommendations for additional measures to increase the supply of market housing to address the housing crisis.

The Task Force report’s recommendations include five main areas to increase the supply of market housing, to meet a goal of adding 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years:

• Make changes to planning policies and zoning to allow for greater density and increase the variety of housing.
• Reduce and streamline urban design rules to lower costs of development.
• Depoliticize the approvals process to address NIMBYism and cut red tape to speed up housing.
• Prevent abuse of the appeal process and address the backlog at the Ontario Land Tribunal by prioritizing cases that increase housing.
• Align efforts between all levels of government to incentivize more housing.

Eisenberger says the city built around 33,000 new units in 2021 and have had two billion dollars worth of development applications, 75 per cent of which are housing.

“Some of the questions we ask in the report and some of the issues we are already doing is is allowing for granny flats and basement apartments and higher density along transit routes,” said Eisenberger. “We are are also looking at tri-plexing single family homes that could potentially become three units, that’s coming to council very shortly.”

Eisenberger says what is concerning to him about the report is that the province is going to be the approval authority at the end of the day, which would make it difficult and expensive for local communities to appeal.

“Local planning shouldn’t be over-rided and local consultation with public and community should be part of the process,” said Eisenberger. “We should not make that more difficult, we should make it easier.”

There is an open house this week and next week for Engage Hamilton, which is a platform for community members to engage and voice their concerns and opinions.

Eisenberger says part of this includes the grids process, which is part of the “No Urban Boundary Expansion” proposal that city council has adopted.

“That basically means we are not going to be developing in green fields,” said Eisenberger. “We’re going to be developing in the existing urban boundary, on spaces that are already available.”

You can engage with Engage Hamilton through the website.