The detour, in this case, is the growing need for a different kind of home building industry to meet demands for housing intensification in the future.
Those new policies were an undercurrent to the annual gathering Friday of leaders of the Hamilton-Halton Home Builders’ Association, and the mayors of Hamilton and Burlington. Home Builders’ president Frank Mercuri and mayors Bob Bratina and Rick Goldring each noted the coming changes and urged each other to help clear the hurdles.
Laid down by the provincial government in 2005 in a document entitled Places to Grow, the new policies require municipalities to restrict outward growth in favour of smaller lots, infill and more townhouses/apartment buildings within their current boundaries.
Goldring said Burlington has made one move toward the new goal with planning policies controlling the building of so-called “monster homes” in the city — houses much larger than others in their immediate neighbourhoods.
The impact of the new rules, he added, are expected to mean that over the next 10 years single-detached homes will decline to about 24 per cent of new housing starts in Burlington, from the current 42 per cent.
“We know that Greenfield growth is at an end in Burlington and the nature of home building in Burlington is going to change,” he said. “We know that means more infilling and intensification, but we still want Burlington to be a balanced and affordable community. To get there we’re going to collectively have to work together.”
The payoff for the cooperation, he added, will be a better city that uses more public transit and fewer cars and has less of a total environmental impact.
Getting there, however, will require careful communication and public engagement efforts with neighbours of new developments who will inevitably object to changes in their neighbourhoods.
“We know that pressure about these projects will come from the community,” Goldring said. “There are good, valid reasons for the Places to Grow plan, and we need to make those clear.”
On the builder’s side, Mercuri called for clearer municipal planning policies to help avoid long and costly Ontario Municipal Board hearings over projects.
“Those hearings only create bad relations with our neighbours,” he said. “We need some kind of advance education for our new neighbours to get comfortable with the housing types coming into their areas.”
A Hamilton planning study in 2007, laying the groundwork for the city’s intensification policy, also sounded that alarm, warning that neighbour opposition can delay a project to the point where its economics are ruined.
The Hamilton study also warned some changes in civic policies around parking standards, heritage designations and overly restrictive zoning would be required to meet the new standards.
Mercuri also repeated the home builders’ traditional call for restraint in setting municipal development fees, noting those charges already account for more than 40 per cent of the price of a new home in Hamilton — and the city is talking about new storm and waste water levies.
If the politicians are serious about affordable communities, he said, they should remember those charges only serve to drive up the cost of a new home.
“Remember, at the end of the day it’s the homebuyer who ends up paying every one of those fees, taxes and levies,” he said.
Bratina also joined the “we have to work together” chorus, adding intensification holds special promise for underused space in downtown Hamilton, where he hopes to continue living.
“I’m going to need somewhere to live downtown, and not a little apartment above a tattoo parlour,” he said.
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