Here's how Ottawa plans to speed up building 7,000 housing units

The City of Ottawa has come up with seven ways to create more badly needed affordable housing and cash in on the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, including converting vacant office space and amending zoning rules.

Councillors with the finance and corporate services committee and housing and planning committee signed off on the action plan.

Staff told them this is not the city's sole plan to address the housing crisis, because the application process could not include well-established projects and because meaningful results must come within three years.

Nevertheless, the city believes the following initiatives will make a "significant impact" by allowing the city to issue enough permits to boost the housing stockby roughly 7,000 units in three years.

Build close to transit

Without any funding,the city estimates that nearly 19,500 new housing units will have municipal approval before Sept.1, 2026. With funding, that total should increaseby 4,000.

The plan is to modify zoning rules around major transit stations, including "increasing the maximum building height to encourage high-density development" and potentially reducing parking requirements.

This also promotes the creation of fullywalkableneighbourhoods, staff said, where residents can access schools, grocery stores, parks and other amenities without relying on a car.

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Promote 'gentle intensification'

More zoning changes will allow property owners to add two additional "dwelling units" to intensify residential neighbourhoods through infill.

The city was already making changes to accommodatethe shift because of provincial legislation, dubbed by the Ford government as the More Homes Built Faster Act.

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Staff wrote in theirapplication that reducing the need to apply for minor variances or zoning amendments will speed up approvals and "unlock greater development potential on 46% of urban residential land in Ottawa."

The creation of triplexes and row houses also aligns with Ottawa's efforts to create "missing middle" homes, the type of housing that aims to allow new owners to enter a crowded market.

Financial offsets for affordable units

A new community improvement plan would provide a financial incentive for developers to create affordable housing by making up for a loss of revenue.

This initiative is not necessarily meant to spur future development, but rather improve the business case for low-rent units.

Converting office space to residential

Ottawa's downtown has been struggling to adjust to a loss of office space that's persisted even after federal workers were told they could no longer work from home full-time, leading many to suggest the buildings should begivennew life.

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The city plans to streamline the process for any owners who want to convert empty workplaces into residences. It's a proposal the city says will also help businesses and events that have felt the impact of plummeting foot traffic.

"We're in a fairly unique position here in Ottawawith the availability of vacant office space," said Meagan Brodie, who helped put together the fundingproposal.

Some experts have saidit's not such a simple proposition, however, suggesting many owners would find it cheaper and easier to tear down a building and start from scratch.

Sell surplus land for less

Another proposal would adjust the city'sland disposal policy to promote swift residential development on surplus municipal-owned land.

That means "actively disposing of lands suitable for housing and proactively rezoning them," according to the action plan.

If the land doesn't go to non-profit housing providers, the city will require affordable housing units or cash-in-lieu.

Reduce affordable housing project backlog

With the new federal funding, the city would also develop what it calls a pipeline to assess and prioritize affordable housing projects that are ready to go ahead.

"There are not-for-profit housing providers, who have proposals to build affordable housing, thousands of unitsfor which the funds don't exist today to actually move ahead and build those," said Coun. Jeff Leiper, chair of the planning and housing committee.

"This is exactly the right source in order to accelerate the building of that."

The Housing Accelerator Fund would partially pay to getshovel-ready projects off the ground. The city said it will increase the percentage of permitted affordable units by five per cent within three years.

Streamlining planning approvals

One complication the city has faced in meeting ambitious housing targets isthe time it takes to process the surge in application for approving site plans and zoning amendments.

Recent Ontario legislation that aimed to speed up the process and lessen the burden of expensive carrying costs on developers has created a bureaucratic headache for many municipalities, including Ottawa.

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The city aims to use part of the federal housing funding to hire additional staff as part of a plan to process and approve applications more quickly.

The federal government will consider those seven initiatives as it evaluates Ottawa's application, but the cityincluded two other tools:one to digitally helpvisualize the impact of proposals and another to address stormwater management issues.

Since the $4 billion fund will cover all municipalities, city staff cautioned that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation could scale down the level of funding awarded to Ottawa depending on the number of successful applicants.

Development fee lossoffsets some savings

The mayor and councillors applaudedstaff's work and acknowledged that it's only part of the city's housing strategy.

But Leiper also pointed out a potential challenge to boosting housing builds that's not covered by the application: a loss in development charges.

Provincial legislation has led to waiving thesefees, historically paid in some instancesby developersto support associated infrastructureneeds.

"If all these units of housing are approved, if they're approved in multi-residential areas, if they're approved near transit, if they are approved at affordable prices," Leipersaid,"They're going to be subject to deep discounts or even exemptions on development charges that would ordinarily go to pay for things like building bigger sewer pipes, expanding our transit fleet, building roads, building cycle paths."

How the city will continue to pay for those things, Leiper said, remains "a conundrum."