Regional council exploring innovative housing idea

It was first discussed in Cambridge, then recently in Kitchener. Now it’s coming to the Region of Waterloo.

Regional council is set to discuss whether regionally owned land like parking lots should be made available for future affordable housing development. The motion will be tabled by Councillor Pam Wolf at Wednesday night’s council meeting.

In an interview with CityNews 570, the CEO of Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region said he’s encouraged by the ideas coming from locals.

“The thing I liked most about housing over parking is that it’s just an interesting idea,” said Philip Mills. “Let’s look at it, let’s review, if it doesn’t work, we’ll move on to something different. You have to have an appetite to start looking at different because ‘the same old same old’ will get us the same old results, which is a housing crisis.”

Mills added that he was disappointed that five of the nine Cambridge councillors voted down a motion in December to direct staff to investigate the idea. That motion was brought forward by Ward 7 representative Scott Hamilton, who will delegate at the upcoming regional council meeting.

Mills told CityNews that housing over parking is the type of idea that municipalities need to look into.

“Housing is one of those issues that comes up and that they faced with, but they don’t build houses,” said Mills. “So how do they get involved when they know [housing] is so important to their constituents? By looking at inclusionary zoning… or looking at [fourplexes], and I think the housing over parking is another one of those ideas.”

Kitchener is the most recent municipality to discuss the housing over parking proposal. On Monday, councillors were in favour of looking at city-owned parking lots for potential housing developments.