Mike Schreiner Talks About Housing

On January 11th I had the opportunity to sit down with Guelph's MPP Mike Schreiner. One of the things I try to do with this blog is to avoid asking superficial questions in order to get what Mike calls "ten second answers". To that end, I put in a couple hours with him to dig out the background to the decisions he makes as Guelph's rep at Queen's Park. What follows comes from the first fifteen minutes of our conversation. I'm planning to add more in future posts.

Mike Schreiner making a statement on Mental Health day.
From the party website, cropped by Bill Hulet.

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Hulet: What do you think should be done about the housing problem that Guelph is facing?

The two biggest issues at the door have been housing and water. What we need is a "housing first" strategy for people with mental health or addiction issues. That's because it's difficult to get someone stabilized when they don't have a place to live. It's hard to get someone into the workforce if they don't have housing. It's hard to get access to essential service like healthcare, addiction service, etc, if they don't have housing. 

Taking a housing first approach isn't just essential for dealing with the homeless---it's essential for a whole lot of other social issues. 

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Here's a short video from the "Homeless Hub" where an expert describes what a housing first strategy looks like, where it comes from, and, how well it works.


The main thing to remember when we are confronted by a homeless person in distress is to ask ourselves a simple, yet profound question: "are they homeless because they are dysfunctional?", or, "are they dysfunctional because they are homeless?"

I first realized this issue when I got to know someone who had a significant mental illness (I assumed schizophrenia---but I'm not a psychiatrist) but had a trust fund and wasn't destitute. She was "mad as a hatter", but she was always well-dressed, owned and drove a car (that took some getting used to---although she seemed safe enough), and, had an apartment near the beer store on Woolwich. That was when I realized that a lot of what I associated with mental illness was actually a product of poverty, not the illness itself.

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Housing affordability affects a lot of people who you wouldn't think of having issues---young, middle-class, professional couples, university or college grads. I'm hearing about housing affordability from people like that---and from folks who are living in tents and moving from place to place to place. 

So it's a problem that requires a multi-pronged approach.

First, I'm a big believer in inclusionary zoning laws. I feel the Liberal government screwed-up bringing in inclusionary zoning rules. That left a bad taste in people's mouths. 

If you look at examples in the United States and Europe inclusionary zoning has been a hugely effective tool in increasing the availability of affordable housing stock. 

So from my perspective any new housing stock in Guelph---condo, rental, subdivision, townhouse---should have a minimum of 20% "lower market housing". Most places fund that through the developer. And they do that by offering the developer certain incentives. One might be a density bonus, or through accelerated approvals. You figure out a way it's incorporated into the cost of doing business for the developer and put in some "bonusing" to incentivize that.  

Where the Liberals made a mistake was that they didn't mandate a minimum percentage and instead mandated a maximum percentage---that was just 10%. And they said the city had to cover 40% of the cost. So that meant it was never going to happen.  

But affordability all starts with inclusionary zoning because that allows you to accelerate the creation of a stock of affordable housing. Part of the challenge is we don't have enough supply to meet demand in Guelph. 

And that starts accommodating the needs particularly of people with modest and working class incomes, as we make more housing stock available. That has a "filtering down effect" on the rest of the marketplace---for people who are more marginally housed.  

That would be everything. Clair-Maltby, the York Road Innovation District, Baker Street, projects in the Ward, stuff happening out on Willow---everything, minimum 20%. 

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The phrase inclusionary zoning was created in opposition to the term exclusionary zoning---which is a very commonly understood concept. Zoning bylaws have been created for a very long time to create areas in the city where certain types of "undesirables" are kept out of the neighbourhood. Inclusionary zoning is designed to ensure that these "undesirables" actually have places to live.

The USA has a longer history of using inclusionary zoning (where it is often called "inclusionary housing") than Canada. It came about there in reaction to racist housing policies that excluded blacks from large areas of cities, which resulted in shortages and high housing costs for the people least able to afford them. In addition, post-war governments in the US had traditionally built significant amounts of social housing for lower income people, but this was cut back during the general retreat of the welfare state since the 1970s.

Europe, on the other hand, has only recently started using inclusionary zoning within the last couple decades. That's because social housing has always been a much larger part of the market there than in North America (much larger than even the US government during it's heyday). It was only because of the growth of the "neo-liberal consensus" that the private sector has recently become a major player in the European housing market. At the same time, Europe has a different attitude towards the price of land as a part of housing costs. The consensus there is that any increase in value comes about because of government action (infrastructure, roads, libraries, schools, museums, etc), so it has the right to extract and use the "windfall profits" of real estate development to force the creation of affordable housing (in economics, this is called "betterment"). (For a brief discussion of these and other issues, take a look at this paper from the 42nd International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP).)

When Schreiner talked about the provincial legislation that governs inclusionary zoning, it sounded like the provincial Liberal government had passed inclusionary zoning legislation that restricts cities to being able to use it for only up to 10% of the units and has to pay 40% of the cost. But I think instead he was making more of a comment about the process whereby the eventual legislation was created rather than the final result. The numbers he was referring to were in the initial version of the bill that was proposed by the Wynne government in early 2018. But there was tremendous push-back by both municipalities and housing advocacy groups during the consultation process, which resulted in these onerous elements of the proposed bill being removed by the time it was eventually passed. But from a "public relations" point of view, this "roll out" was a total disaster because of the long-lasting impression it left with city Councils and the general public.

I looked through the part of the Planning Act that deals with inclusionary zoning.  As near as I can tell, the province gives cities a great deal of latitude to use this concept when creating new subdivisions. All they have to do is add it to their Official Plan.

This in itself is a hurdle. As I pointed out in a previous post, Guelph's current official plan was appealed by a list of eight different groups (seven businesses and one community organization) to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). This went from October 2014 to March 2018---during which time the Liberal government dramatically weakened the ability of the OMB to change municipal Official Plans. Since then, the Conservatives have resurrected the Board and given it back it's own powers. This means that municipalities are back to the "good old days" where they feel that they have to self-censor themselves to avoid successful challenges by developers in costly OMB fights. The implication for me is that this will cause Councils and staff to think long and hard before they propose "bold moves" with inclusionary zoning.

In addition, the Act sets out rules that say a detailed "Assessment Report" needs to be filled out by the city that details the following:

• demographics and population;
• household incomes;
• housing supply by housing type that is both existing and planned for in the OP;
• housing types and sizes needed as IZ units;
• current average market price and rent for each housing type, taking into account location;
• potential impacts on the housing market and potential financial viability of development or redevelopment from IZ by-laws on unit set asides, affordability period, measures and incentives and price or rent of an affordable unit, taking into account value of land, cost of construction, market price, market rent and housing demand and supply. The analysis must also take into account provincial policies and plans and official plan policies related to growth and development;
• written opinion of the impact analysis from a person independent of the municipality.

The legislation says that an Assessment Report needs to be done before Inclusionary Zoning is added to the Official Plan and needs to be done over again every five years after the last one in order to ensure that no new changes are required. In addition, every two years the city is required to provide to the general public a report that outlines the following:

1. The number of affordable housing units.
2. The types of affordable housing units.
3. The location of the affordable housing units.
4. The range of household incomes for which the affordable housing units were provided.
5. The number of affordable housing units that were converted to units at market value.
6. The proceeds that were received by the municipality from the sale of affordable housing units.

In addition, there are other specific rules governing Inclusionary Zoning. Two tremendously important ones are that inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to any project that has ten or fewer units, and,

(c) on or before the day an official plan authorizing inclusionary zoning was adopted by the council of the municipality, a request for an amendment to an official plan, if required, and an application to amend a zoning by-law were made in respect of the development or redevelopment along with an application for either of the following:

(i) approval of a plan of subdivision under section 51 of the Act, or
(ii) approval of a description or an amendment to a description under section 9 of the Condominium Act, 1998; or

(d) on or before the day the inclusionary zoning by-law is passed, an application is made in respect of the development or redevelopment for a building permit, a development permit, a community planning permit, or approval of a site plan under subsection 41 (4) of the Act.

It appears to me that this second rule basically means that all land that developers already own is, in effect, "grandfathered" under the old rules and cannot be subject to inclusionary zoning---simply because they can easily apply for an change to the bylaw once they see Council moving towards inclusionary zoning.

This is doubly important because there are increasingly very few greenfield developments left in cities like Guelph because of the Places to Grow Act (which I discussed in a previous post). This means that a great deal of new housing stock needs to be created through infill and "repurposing". This is where the first rule applies---inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to anything with ten units or less.

Schreiner's point is well taken about the need to actually set aside a percentage of the units in any given area of the city so there is housing for middle to lower income individuals. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, it looks like the current legislation comes about 50 years too late to deal with the big housing problems that Guelph currently faces. What we need is some sort of regulatory framework that would allow cities to retroactively create inclusionary zoning. I have no idea how that would work, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Schreiner is proposing such a thing---even though as the leader of a provincial party that is theoretically in his area of responsibilities. But speaking from a strictly practical point of view his description has great merit---and might actually be the only thing that would really work. But I can't help but think that it could only be done on a large scale with enormous opposition from both developers and home owners.

Video still used by "Fair Use" provision, from the
You Can't Get There from Here website.

Having said that, there will be instances where inclusionary zoning will be a tool that Guelph can use---if the newly-resurrected OMB allows it. But unless there is some significant radical legislation from Queen's Park, it is easy to agree with Schreiner that a "multi-pronged" approach is needed.

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The next thing for me is better utilization of our existing housing stock. That means laneway housing, secondary suites, granny suites, basement apartments, etc. We have a lot of "over-housed" people in Guelph. And we could quickly create a better utilization of our existing housing stock. 

I've talked to a number of realtors in Guelph just to get a feel of whether there is a demand for that. The feedback I've gotten is "yes". One day I actually walked around with a real estate agent. And she pointed out "that garage should be a granny suite", "that should be a laneway house", blah, blah, blah. 

It's a quicker way of "ramping up" the existing housing stock---which again has a filtering effect into the rest of the market, and it provides additional income for people---especially aging baby boomers, who maybe need less housing---but want to stay in their homes. 

There area a lot of people who are aging and facing housing affordability issues. This is a way to increase affordability for people who already own a home. And it increases the stock of housing on the market. 

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When Schreiner talks about "filtering", he's mentioning an important concept that tends to be ignored by most of the people interested in housing affordability. Basically, the idea is that existing housing stock declines in value as it ages, which makes it more affordable. To understand this, I think about all the rundown apartments and shared rented houses I lived in when I was a university student and poorly-paid janitor. These are also the "starter home", "handy-man specials" that my siblings and I bought and fixed-up using "sweat equity".

Unfortunately, if a housing market heats up too much---as it has in Guelph---housing stock doesn't decline in value anymore. This means that existing apartment owners will put money back into fixing up their units, because they know that they can keep raising the rents without ending up with empty spaces. It also means that people with a lot of money will buy up "fixer uppers" and either bulldoze the building to replace it with a "new build", or, hire expensive contractors to renovate the property. Both of these processes cut down the existing stock of cheap housing and prevent new filtering from taking place. This is the process known as "gentrification", which pushes low and medium income people out of neighbourhoods.

Filtering ceases and gets replaced by gentrification when the demand for housing outpaces the supply. Schreiner is suggesting that in order to stop gentrification and start filtering again the city needs to find a fast way to move from a housing deficit to a slight surplus. And, he thinks the most practical option would be through increasing the number of "informal units" in low density neighbourhoods---lanehouses, tiny houses, basement apartments, coach houses, etc. Not only would this be the fastest approach, it is all within the legal power of the city---so no money or legislation from other levels of government would be necessary.

There is, however, a "600 lb gorilla in the living room". That is that a lot of people who already own their own homes don't want more people living in their neighbourhood. That's why we have all these zoning regulations in the first place. (That's the exclusionary zoning I mentioned above.) One of the key places where this arrives is with regards to parking.

When people rent out a room, basement apartment, granny flat, etc, to someone to help pay off their enormous mortgage, that renter usually wants a place to park her car. And when the city "trades off" required parking to get more affordable housing units (a common play in inclusionary zoning---because parking is astronomically expensive to build), there are invariably complaints from existing home owners about the increased levels of on-street parking and other owners paving their front yards to increase parking spaces.

You only have to be a casual observer of development in Guelph to see people's concerns. Take a look at this June 11th article by Graeme McNaughton in The Mercury/Tribune about a proposed townhouse development. It contains the following quote:

While delegates spoke to the impact this would have on the area’s greenery, another issue also saw a number of comments: where is everyone going to park?
“It is at maximum capacity,” resident Rubina Heddokheel said of the current on-street parking situation in the area.
“There's no parking available, ever.”

And here are a couple comments about another article by McNaughton on October 24th, 2018 about a proposed 800 unit townhouse complex proposed near the CostCo.

I spoke to three of the ward 4 candidates when they canvassed. Not one mentioned this development. And I did bring up both city expanding in this area as well as township use of there lands ( that potential for the glass plant raised a lot of eyebrows in this area). Here’s an idea. How about a developer submits a plan for single family dwellings in this area.

802 parking spaces for 800 units?

And, I know that once the condo tower at the old Marsh Tire site opened up, there were hordes of cars parking at the curb all through my neighbourhood. (I talked to a couple people about this, they said that the visitor parking at the complex is far too small for demand, so they have to park at places like the curb in front of my house instead.)

I think that any politician who really wants to help with housing needs to come up with some sort of strategy for changing public opinion about increased density. There also needs to be some appreciation of how absolutely devastating parking issues can be to creating a good housing strategy. Unfortunately, politicians who tell people things that they don't want to hear generally do not get elected, so I can understand why they try to "accentuate the positive". But somewhere, somehow, this parking issue needs to be dealt with. And, who better to do it than a Green Party MPP?

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The next idea is we need government to build more supported housing. We have a lot of people who face problems of poverty and mental health---even if we create a lot of housing stock and filtering lowers prices for a lot of people, there are still going to be people who for these reasons are going to need more supports around them. We haven't built enough supportive housing in Ontario. That is going to have to come from government funding.  

We need changes to our municipal bylaws, but also to the Planning Act to allow for alternate types of housing to be easier to build, develop and access. What I mean by that is co-housing, tiny homes, community shared housing, etc. As an example we have a 30 foot frontage bylaw in Guelph that prevents the creation of tiny homes. 

Guelph Architect, David McAuley.
Image c/o Bookshelf Cafe, used
under the Fair Use provision.

A lot of people in Guelph would like to have tiny homes. There are bureaucratic planning and bylaw barriers to building new types of housing. I know David McAuley is trying to build a co-housing project up on Speedvale for seniors and he's running into all kinds of planning and bylaw barriers to making it happen.  

If we removed some of the impediments to building new forms of housing and habitation, that would again build up supply, and that would have a filtering effect.

The final piece is a reinvestment---I see the federal government doing this because I don't see the province doing it. We need more co-op housing, more social housing, government supported housing as well. 

For me, if you take a multi-pronged effort we can go a long way towards solving the affordability crisis. 

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One final point. Most of what I've mentioned is medium to long term. We have some very short term things that need to be dealt with right now. One is shelter space, two is opening warming centres. (I don't know where---my office, City Hall, the Armouries.) We have people sleeping on the streets in the dead of winter. [This interview was recorded in January, remember.] 

The survey said 300 [Mike is referring to the Guelph Homeless Survey, which had recently been done when the interview was recorded] but that's probably under-estimated---people sleeping on the streets and they need some place warmer. I've gone to the Drop In Centre and sat and listened to people. Most of these folks are just desperate for a place to sleep---tonight! 

A lot of these folks seriously consider getting arrested, because at least a jail cell has heat. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. 

Hulet: It's also a huge waste of government money.

A huge waste of government money! 

[According to the John Howard Society, the annual average cost of keeping someone in a provincial jail is $67,000. That would cost about $184/day. Surely it's cheaper to provide a decent warming centre!]

Another one is to get creative about tent cities. Right now we waste a ton of government money, and do significant harm to people's lives---I think---by shutting down a tent city. People lose their home and then they move somewhere else. In Guelph and then months later we shut that tent city down, and then they move somewhere else. 

I don't know entirely what the solution is---but that's a problem that we need to tackle. And we need to do it in a way that provides supports and services to people without destroying their home every month. It might not be much, but it's something---and we're taking it away month to month to month.  

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Reading through this transcript I'm struck by one thing that I hadn't noticed before. Mike Schreiner has a great deal of compassion towards the poor and distressed. He's obviously spent a great deal of time thinking about these issues and seems to be searching for the best solutions he can. This should dispel any idea that as a Green he doesn't care about anything but the environment.

I also think that it's important to recognize the breadth of ideas that he is dealing with. He's obviously spent a lot of time reading on the subject. He most definitely isn't just repeating some "talking points" that were prepared for him by some staffer. I think we could have done far worse when the city elected him to represent us at Queen's Park.

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Furthermore, I say to you---the climate emergency must be dealt with!