Waterloo council approves new affordable housing strategy

Waterloo city council is moving ahead with an affordable housing strategy, seen as a framework the city can use to coordinate future housing developments in an effort to tackle the affordable housing crisis.

The approach of the plan is to address the main drivers of the affordable housing decline that fall within municipal control.

The presentation provided to council Monday outlined four main drivers to affordable housing decline in the region: inadequate market housing supply, inadequate non-market housing supply, loss of existing affordable housing supply and inadequate housing diversity. 

In total, six goals and 30 actions we're provided in this approved plan to combat those drivers, some of which include planning for and prioritizing the provision of non-market housing, and continuing to align policies and processes to support the efficient delivery of new housing.

Over the next decade, the city's proposed targets for new housing developments include a minimum of just over 8,000 new housing developments to meet population demands.

The goal is to have 30 per cent of new builds be affordable housing. That equates to about 2,500 new builds.

In addition, another 33 per cent — or about 2,700 new developments — are set to be rentals.

Now the city is turning to input form the community and housing service providers.

For the complete breakdown of the plan that was presented to council you can visit the city's website.