'It's a national housing crisis': What can be done to solve the affordable housing crisis?

The booming real estate market in Flamborough - which has caused house prices and rents to soar - has highlighted need for affordable housing in the community - and across the country.

Tom Cooper, the director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, said rents have skyrocketed" the last couple of years - something that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. He said the situation is creating a lot of demand for affordable housing - which isn't there because governments of all levels have not made the necessary investments over the past 20 years.

He said while it's great that recent affordable housing investments have been made in the city, the numbers just aren't what's needed to resolve the housing crisis.

It's a national housing crisis that has resulted from a lack of investment of the last 20 years - so it's going to take a long time to catch up; it's going to take massive investments in affordable housing."

However, while Ward 15 Coun. Judi Partridge said one of the biggest issues in Waterdown and Flamborough is the overall cost of housing, Partridge said she thinks the solution will have to be through an organization such as Indwell or a church, rather than through existing developers.

Affordable housing in Waterdown is going to take a specific development or a portion of a development done by an organization that is focused on geared-to-income or affordable housing, as a component," she said. Developers, if they can't make money on it, they're not really inclined to do that kind of thing.

So to sit back and hope that a developer is going to come through and say, Jeez, I'd like to do 30 to 50 per cent affordable housing,' that's not going to happen - I just think that's an unrealistic pipe dream."

So what can be done about the situation? Cooper said all levels of government can play a role.

At the municipal level, he said Hamilton needs to put in place inclusionary zoning bylaws, which would require developers to set aside a certain proportion of new builds to affordable housing.

For example, if there's new housing being built along the LRT line in central Hamilton, let's ensure a portion of that is affordable," he explained. The municipal government has the power to implement that sort of directive now and we're going to be pushing them to do it."

At the provincial level, Cooper said the government should implement real rent control, rather than the existing controls that only impact the rent while a tenant is living in an apartment.

As soon as somebody moves out, the landlord can bump up the rent to whatever they think the market can bear," he said. Often, for a two-bedroom apartment (in Hamilton), we're seeing upwards of $1,800 to $2,000 now.

We need real rent controls in the province to stop the greed of big property management companies from taking advantage of the lack of affordable housing in Ontario."

At the federal level, Cooper said there needs to be massive investment in affordable housing builds.

Given what we've seen, they've started making small investments, but I think we really need to amp that up and ensure that we're getting tens of thousands of new units built annually," he said. Right now there are about 5,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in Hamilton and that list hasn't really budged much in the last decade or so.

We need the units for these people to be able to access and that's simply not happening right now."

In this fall's federal election, Cooper said, tough questions around affordable housing will have to be asked of all political parties.

What kind of investments in affordable housing are you going to be making in order to reduce this crisis that so many families are facing right now?"