Moving on ... affordable rental housing

[grammafreddy]

Okay, the election is over and done. Let's move on.

I have three passions ... Backyard chickens, urban planning and affordable rental housing for working folks.

I'll deal with the first two elsewhere.

This is a serious thread about affordable rental housing for working people. If you can't be serious and helpful, please find another sandbox.

What do you want?

Where do you want it?

What does it need to have?

How much per month is "affordable"?

[mountainmama]

This is not a proposal but, if you take a look at the Kiwanis building on Gordon.. regarding sq. ft. per unit 500-600 is very livable, location should have fairly close access to medical, grocery, or shopping center. Building up will save expensive land purchase. I dont have factual knowledge of the building but, I know it is lower rent and they seem very happy there.

[mountainmama]

I also think units should separate people with young families, from singles and seniors in separate buildings. Young singles should have their building up near Big White turnoff. People with young families need to be near schools. I am suggesting 3 kinds of affordable housing.

[001TT]

point form brain storming

-on bus routes
-shopping nearby
-decent neighborhood
-schools
-children and pets
-laundry facilities

[001TT]

Affordable could be based on minimum wage. I once read somewhere that your housing should not be more than one fourth your income. Good luck doing that in Kelowna! Housing costs way more than even half your income for lots of people and many people pay way more than that. Maybe base it on minimum wage but I do not know how you would divide affordable from that

[logicalview]

Okay, the election is over and done. Let's move on.

I have three passions ... Backyard chickens, urban planning and affordable rental housing for working folks.

I'll deal with the first two elsewhere.

This is a serious thread about affordable rental housing for working people. If you can't be serious and helpful, please find another sandbox.

What do you want?

Where do you want it?

What does it need to have?

How much per month is "affordable"?

Who do you want to pay for it?

[twobits]

Who do you want to pay for it?

The million dollar question that everyone likes to dance around. It's the elephant in the room that nobody see's.

[ScottRoss]

Affordable housing as loosely defined by the city, BC government and most affordable housing organizations is housing that does not exceed 30% of a household's income.

One policy I still feel needs to be adopted is the reforming of our development cost charges to base them on square footage instead of our current standard charge per unit. Right now though our city has a density gradient, it is too broad and only encourages developers to build large expensive homes.

Development cost charges are fees imposed on a developer to connect infrastructure to the properties, such as sewage and roads. Kelowna's development cost charges are broadly applied to every unit. Now if you were a developer and you had the choice between constructing a small unit and a large unit and these DCCs were the same, you would have an incentive to build the larger more expensive home as you would have a higher profit margin.

What Kelowna needs to do, like other municipalities have done, is adopt DCCs based on square footage which would not only make developments better reflect the services going to those units (as larger homes tend to require more infrastructure), but would offer incentive for developers to build smaller more affordable units.

Though this does not increase the rental supply, it is just one idea to increase affordablitiy of housing in Kelowna. The newly adopted affordable housing strategy does contain some other good ideas.

[normaM]

People could look at doing co-ops, they have been successful other places.

[JOF585]

People could look at doing co-ops, they have been successful other places.

Wow ....I was thinking the same thing. Was about to post that. Works well indeed.

[Captain Awesome]

People could look at doing co-ops, they have been successful other places.

That's one thing that I always wondered - Vancouver has quite a lot of them. Most have their mortgages backed by Canadian govt, have favorable payment plans, and thus can greatly decrease the cost. Also, maintenance and strata fees are decreased through getting renters do the work (part of their agreement with the co-op).

My friends just moved into a large 2-br unit, their rent is about $900 which is very affordable for them, and crazy affordable for Vancouver.

[givenrfarm]

Let's put affordable into perspective...
Government spent something like 30+ million dollars on an overpass that lasted less than a month. Or how about the "art" for the bridge. Or what about the whole pine cone emblem or Westbank to West Kelowna fiasco. Honestly, I wonder how many apartments/condos/townhomes all those funds could have been spent on.
I need a place I can afford. I need a place that isn't going to make me sleep with a gun in case a crack head breaks in. I need a place that will charge me rent based on monies earned, not what the guy downtown in the luxury highrise pays. I need a place that won't charge me small rent, then cost me $1000 in heating bills every month. I currently have a four bed home. I rent out 2 bedrooms (the big ones) to people I got off Castanet. Me and the kid sleep in the two smaller bedrooms. In total, including the power/rent/utilities, it works out to $700 each for all of us per month. Why can't we build or restructure existing places to be like this? If you can't afford a big place, fine. But it's nearly impossible to find affordable when you factor in that nearly all places are well over 1000 square feet. Do people really need living room AND family room AND entertainment room AND rec room? Honestly. Those little post war houses are the cutest things out there and they don't have all those rooms. So why not take one of them, make it have babies, and put them all into one conjoined space for 4 families to afford together. Seperate yet together. But, this coming from a poor chick. What do I know. There's probably some Kelowna zoning thing that would never allow that to happen.

[gordon_as]

Okay, the election is over and done. Let's move on.

I have three passions ... Backyard chickens, urban planning and affordable rental housing for working folks.

I'll deal with the first two elsewhere.

This is a serious thread about affordable rental housing for working people. If you can't be serious and helpful, please find another sandbox.

What do you want?

Where do you want it?

What does it need to have?

How much per month is "affordable"?

Who do you want to pay for it?

Exactly. What makes you think that city council can create affordable housing. Only a developer who is OK with risking his money on an investment with potentially no return can do that. Here in Vernon I have seen many development plans scraped because the developer was forced to include low cost housing . It didn't take an economics degree to recognize that their money would be better spent elsewhere. Now it is still just a vacant lot.

[Logitack]

What makes you think that city council can create affordable housing.

well, most candidates thought council could help create affordable housing. even the new mayor said

HOUSING
With Kelowna’s population expected to grow by 50,000 over the next two decades, we must move forward on proposals such as Central Green on the old Kelowna Secondary School site. We need a mix of housing geared to seniors and non-market rental units to address two categories of accommodations now in short supply. That will require a renewed spirit of cooperation between our city planners and developers. Most importantly, that requires leadership from those who are elected to lead.
http://electwaltergrayformayor.com/vision/

unless walter was just spewing BS, then he apparently has some sort of "plan" to find solutions to the affordable housing dilemma, no?

[gordon_as]

Perhaps tax breaks , and reduced DCC charges would help make this happen. Unfortunately , many here would interpret that as doing favors for their (fourchange) buddies , and cry foul. Darned if you do , darned if you don't.