How much affordable housing does a city actually require? Made-in-B.C. system aims to assess needs
University of British Columbia researchers have designed new tools to help assess how much affordable housing is needed in a city.
They have developed the “Housing Assessment Resource Tools,” or HART, to fill what they call a gap in the strategy to help the more than 1.7 million people in Canada currently living in unaffordable, overcrowded or poor condition housing, says a news release sent out by UBC on Tuesday.
UBC expert, Penny Gurstein, the head of the Housing Research Collaborative at UBC’s school of community and regional planning, says there’s no standardized method in Canada to assess needs by income and future population growth at any level of government
So, she says, up to now, city planners have used a used a variety of tools with mixed results.
“HART is designed to provide planners with a simple, robust, equity-focused tool that will work across different locations and jurisdictions,” says Gurstein in the news release.
She says the tool assesses population and does a land assessment to find the best locations to deliver affordable housing.
Her group first tested HART in the city of Kelowna. It found Kelowna has a good housing supply, but among lower-income households, more than half of the families are paying an unaffordable amount of their income on rent.
“We also found that close to 30 per cent of single mothers and almost 20 per cent of Indigenous households live in need of housing or need more affordable housing,” added Gurstein.
Gurstein says she and her team developed HART after winning Stage 1 of the “Housing Supply Challenge, ” a callout from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for new ideas to help more people find affordable housing.
She says the next step is to win Stage 2 and roll the idea out into other cities.
“Regardless of the outcome, we hope to disseminate HART widely, and one of the ways to do that is by training planners and other professionals to use this tool through an online certificate program,” says Gurstein.
Gurstein worked with researchers from the University of Ottawa and University of Waterloo on the project.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction from landmark trial
New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.
BREAKING Honda to get up to $5B in govt help for EV battery, assembly plants
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
1 arrested in northern Alberta during public shelter order
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.
Secret $70M Lotto Max winners break their silence
During a special winner celebration near their hometown, Doug and Enid shared the story of how they discovered they were holding a Lotto Max ticket worth $70 million and how they kept this huge secret for so long.
Remains from a mother-daughter cold case were found nearly 24 years later, after a deathbed confession from the suspect
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
Monthly earnings rise, payroll employment falls: jobs report
The number of vacant jobs in Canada increased in February, while monthly payroll employment decreased in food services, manufacturing, and retail trade, among other sectors.
First in Canada procedure performed at London, Ont. hospital
A London man has become the first person in Canada to receive a robotic assisted surgery on his spine. Dave Myeh suffered from debilitating, chronic back pain that led to sciatica in his right now and extreme pain in his lower back.
Doctors say capital gains tax changes will jeopardize their retirement. Is that true?
The Canadian Medical Association asserts the Liberals' proposed changes to capital gains taxation will put doctors' retirement savings in jeopardy, but some financial experts insist incorporated professionals are not as doomed as they say they are.
Something in the water? Canadian family latest to spot elusive 'Loch Ness Monster'
For centuries, people have wondered what, if anything, might be lurking beneath the surface of Loch Ness in Scotland. When Canadian couple Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman visited the Scottish highlands earlier this month with their two children, they didn’t expect to become part of the mystery.