Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21 st Century

Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

Presentation by CHBA – [Name] to the Municipal Council of [Name]

June, 2008


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Housing affordability and choice are essential to community prosperity in the 21st century.


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Purposes of today’s presentation:

Present main results of a report by Altus Clayton.

Highlight implications for our community. Determine next steps in responding to

these implications.


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Who We Are:

Represent new home builders, home renovators, and residential land developers

Active in [name of municipality] since [date].

Contribute to community prosperity through construction, business investment and participation in planning.


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What We Do:

Plan new subdivisions and infill housing developments in detail, operating within provincial and municipal regulations.

Service new homes in subdivisions and major development sites with local infrastructure… water, sewers, roads, sidewalks.

Pay for all or most off-site infrastructure to serve new development.


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Why Altus Clayton Believes a Fresh Perspective on Community Prosperity is Needed: Canada emerging into long period of progressively

tighter labour markets. Competition for skilled and talented people becoming

tougher nationally and locally. Housing affordability and choice: critical elements to

attracting and retaining talented people, especially families.

Traditional methods of attracting investment are not going to work nearly as well as in the past.


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Key findings: In the emerging “knowledge-based” economy,

communities attract investment by providing attractive, talented and diverse local labour force… the “creative class”.

Location decisions of talented individuals much more important.

Essential to build vibrant and attractive communities with a good quality of life.

Need to foster well-functioning housing markets that offer housing affordability and choice, especially for family households.

Growth not a cost to the community, but a long-term investment, particularly as population ages.


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City planning policies can directly contribute to attractiveness of our community for talented and creative people by: Improving time-horizon and certainty of planning

processes. Providing adequate amount of urban infrastructure

investment, timed to support municipal plans and the pace of development;

Creating new methods to pay for urban infrastructure that are fair and balanced, and avoid introducing distortions into the market; and

Working with other orders of government to ensure that right types of expenditures are funded from the appropriate tax sources.

Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21 st Century

Documents

Transcript of Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21 st Century