Introducing #housesj
A dilapidated home in the south end
As part of my campaign for Councillor at Large in the 2021 Municipal election, I am going to be blogging. Some folks long for more details and information during elections to make up their mind on who to cast their vote for; I’m certainly one of them. There are other people who have a hearing impairment and would love to have typed format content that they can engage with so they can participate in our democracy. Whatever the reason for being here on my Blog, thank you. Below you will find my first article outlining some of my thoughts and ideas around housing in our city. There is more to come so stay connected and check back frequently. I will eventually be posting two blogs on this site each week.
Housing in 3-dimensions
Right now, there is a multitude of voices in our city calling for attention on housing. Tennant’s have banded together to create new advocacy networks like the Tenants Advocacy Group of New Brunswick (TAGNB) and The New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights (NBCTR). These are crucial steps that have been taken that allow tenants to work with experts to provide input into our system, much like health experts do for our healthcare system. Landlords and developers have pushed back on some of these issue with their spin of the current situation, which usually involves an economics 101 lesson about supply and demand. People all over Saint John are feeling and sensing that things have changed, and they have.
Saint John used to be a renters/buyers’ market and now it is a sellers/landlord market. Saint John has had some of the biggest sales months in decades in the past 12 months and it continues. Meanwhile, countless organizations have raised alarms about New Brunswick’s lack of regulations that fail to protect those renting. We have witnessed multiple articles that highlight 30-40% rent hikes with one to two months’ notice. We have also seen 30 organizations call on the government for immediate actions around capping rent increases, evictions, and an overhaul of the residential tribunal. The Premier's response was similar to what he has made previously to health care workers “if you want that kind of wage, then Alberta’s the place to get it”, a complete rejection of the belief that there is a problem that needs to be solved and a lack of leadership from NB Housing and our ministers.
Meanwhile, the NB Housing list in our city has hundreds of people looking for more affordable housing, vacancies are at an all-time low, and much of the development happening in parts of our city is not the affordable kind. Financial experts unanimously agree that to have a healthy financial margin, people should be spending no more than 35% of their income on housing. That equates to about 1000$ per month for the average person in SJ based on median household income. Some recent studies suggest that with the cost of building materials increasing dramatically that an average 3-bedroom apartment unit now costs about $100,000 to build! There is simply no way, without major government subsidies to build affordable housing. So, is new construction the solution? Maybe not but there are things we can do.
Having worked in the industry, it is clear to me that there are certainly ways that we can save money during the building phase. Smaller footprint housing and innovative framing techniques that use 24” on centre stud placement are two immediate actions. We must stop building homes that are so big. The average four-bedroom house is 2500 sq. ft. and we all know firsthand how much of that is just storage for things we do not need or just wasted space. Thoughtful designers are now building small footprint housing for four bedrooms at 1200 sq ft with every square inch made to be functional and effective with no loss in aesthetics. Our city could adopt bylaws that promote and even incentivize this type of development. Builders and old-school realtors may push back here and say “people don’t want that type of development” but that is just a failure to imagine how to do things differently, not a fact.
We could also adopt new green framing techniques that utilize 24” on centre stud placement. This uses far less wood and does not compromise structural integrity. It also allows for more insulation to be used which creates less thermal bridging to the outside through these studs making them much better than the traditional R-2000 homes of the ’90s. These take leadership at the top to promote and incentivize as most builders in my trade are less interested in trying new methods or approaches.
But what about apartments? The way forward here is surely to salvage our older housing stock and revitalize what we have. There are hundreds of buildings on the cities dangerous and vacant buildings list. Many of these buildings were abandoned by companies that went bankrupt, landlords that failed to invest in their maintenance or landlords who just cared about pulling out the revenue and dissolved their “company” when it became too costly. These buildings cost our fire department countless hours to monitor, they deter investment in our neighbourhoods and create a general feeling of shame for those who live near them.
To solve this will take leadership from the top as well. NB Housing has no preferential funding for buildings like this. Sure, they incentivize renovations that are geared toward affordability, but we need something much more targeted in Saint John. It is hard to see from Fredericton, but not all neighbourhoods are equally endowed with this problem. The brunt of this is felt in our cities lower-west side, south end, and old north end. With a proposal from our city, NB Housing could be convinced to have a tiered incentive program that puts preferential funding for renovation work where it needs to happen most. Much like NB Power or SJ Energy has a tiered system for energy retrofit incentives based on incentivizing systems that will make the greatest impact first.
Our municipality has a crucial role to play. Currently, the average amount of time that it takes between a building becoming vacant and it being demolished is 8 years. We need to develop an early warning system that engages city inspectors and other stakeholders sooner. We have at our disposal here in Saint John Canada’s only urban Land Bank! The Saint John Land Bank is modelled after a successful model of local municipal agencies across the United States which have faced similar problems that we have. In other words, there is a need for leadership on housing at the municipal level, not just the provincial. I want to be that leader. I’ve already been in this sector with the Saint John Tool Library and the Saint John Community Build for 3 years. With your vote, I can apply this passion and commitment to city hall in a tangible way.
More details to come on the early warning system and the SJ Land Bank’s potential in a later blog…