What Development At Shannon Park Tells Us About Halifax’s Housing Crisis
HALIFAX – The latest plan to develop the Shannon Park lands in the north end of Dartmouth is ambitious.
Canada Lands Company, which bought the 85 acres of property in 2014, wants to create a mixed-use community spread out over 23 newly built city blocks. The community will feature a mixture of building types that will provide as many as 3,000 homes to Haligonians.
Along with the homes, there will be 7.5 acres of public parklands, walking trails, a transit hub, and more.
Canada Lands revealed its plans at a public hearing on February 2. Local residents and community council members overwhelmingly supported the plan. But that didn’t stop a chorus of community leaders, residents, and activists from stepping to the mic to voice their concerns.
The one question on everyone’s lips? How much affordable housing will there be?
‘All our hopes and dreams’
Developing the vast tract of land at Shannon Park has been an elusive dream in the HRM. It’s one of the last places in the city where so much land is free in such an ideal location. Plans to turn it into a residential community have been in the works, in some form, for about a decade. But movement on the project has been glacial.
As Coun. Sam Austin put it at the February 2 meeting: “Shannon Park has been this place where we’ve all poured all our hopes and dreams.”
For a long time, the community was the site of military housing, but the land has only been bare for a decade or so.
Over the last decade, the area has been floated as a potential site to host the Commonwealth Games, a possible residential community, or a place to put a CFL stadium. But a few years ago, after extensive community consultation, a plan to create a new residential neighbourhood emerged.
Since then (and even before) there have been strong calls from the community for Shannon Park to contain meaningful affordable housing.
As Lisa Hayhurst, the chair of ACORN’s Dartmouth chapter, said at the hearing: “historically speaking, Shannon Park was affordable housing. It needs to stay that way.”
‘Affordable’ housing that’s actually affordable
Dartmouth North MLA Susan Leblanc was one of the many speakers at the February 2 hearing. She pointed out the area faces higher rents and lower vacancy rates than the already record-setting levels in the rest of HRM. She said Shannon Park is the best opportunity to meaningfully address that.
She, along with many other speakers, said the way “affordable” is often defined doesn’t reflect reality.
Often, units that are sold at 20 percent below market value are considered affordable. Leblanc pointed out that still puts them wildly out of reach for people at the lower end of the income spectrum.
“Twenty percent below market value does not mean affordable anymore –at least at the market rates are happening right now,” she said.
Instead, she asked for affordable to be defined as 30 percent of a person’s income. That would match the generally accepted standard for how much a person should have to spend on shelter.
For its part, Canada Lands appears committed to making meaningful, long-lasting affordable housing a part of the Shannon Park development.
Anne Winters said providing affordable housing “is a critical piece” of the company’s plans for the land and that affordable housing “stands at the core” of how the company develops communities.
Winters said Canada Lands’ plan is to dedicate a minimum of 20 percent of the units on the site to affordable housing.
But within that pledge beats the heart of the problem plaguing Halifax’s affordable housing efforts.
The worst way to create affordable housing
To keep its 20-percent promise, Canada Lands must make a special arrangement with the city to skirt rules that dictate how developers contribute to affordable housing.
Any developer that wants to put up a significant development in Halifax must provide a “public benefit” that supports affordable housing. Right now, the only way they can do that is by paying cash to the city. The city then dolls out that money as grants to not-for-profits creating affordable housing in the HRM.
But the money developers like Canada Lands pay can’t be attached to a specific project. That means a company building an apartment complex in North-end Halifax pays a hefty sun towards affordable housing, but that money can then be put toward a project in Cole Harbour. Meanwhile, no affordable units are included in their own project.
Most affordable housing advocates say this is one of the worst ways to develop affordable housing. They argue creating affordable housing should be about more than churning out cheap units in concentrated areas. Communities are more vibrant, and people get more benefits from affordable housing, if it’s integrated into a more economically diverse community.
As Leblanc said during her impassioned plea: “I want to live [in Shannon Park], but I only want to live there if other people who make less than me and more than me can also live there. Mixed-use needs to be about mixed-income as well,” she said.
Tim Allenby, the co-chair of ACORN’s Dartmouth chapter, had a similar idea.
“I’m a firm believer that the character of a city is in the people that work there and live there. And we can’t have the amenities that we expect from a livable city without the people to make it function: retail workers, restaurant workers, grocery workers, delivery drivers. All of these people deserve to be able to put a roof over ther own head, through their own work,” he said.
Other residents should pay for Shannon Park’s affordable units
City councillors seem to recognize Allenby’s points. However, they don’t have the power to make those kinds of changes.
As Austin explained, when council voted on the “public good” rules that govern affordable housing contributions, it only had the authority to take cash or mandate time-limited affordable units (those are “affordable” units that revert back to standard, market-rate units after a set period of time).
Given those choices, council decided cash for not-for-profits was the better option.
“It was kind of a pragmatic choice,” Austin explained.
But advocates like Miia Suokonautio of YWCA Halifax pointed out that the grant money from the city isn’t enough to sustain affordable housing long-term.
“You can’t just give land [or money] to a non-profit for free and then expect the chips to fall for everything else,” she said.
The cost of construction for affordable housing is the same as it is for market-rate housing, and lower rents simply can’t cover that cost. The only way it works is if market-rate housing subsidizes the affordable; they must be considered together.
Austin agreed. He argued that trying to fix affordable housing on a development-by-development basis won’t solve the problem.
“We’re kind of looking at the wrong people in some ways. Canada Lands will do as good on affordable housing as they’re supported to allow them to do. And that’s true for any developer,” he said.
The cost of construction is going through the roof, Austin said, and developers need to recoup that cost. That’s much tougher for not-for profits that are charging below-market rent.
“[Not-for-profits] can’t pick up the whole weight of this crisis. It’s impossible,” Austin said.
“The only way to fix this problem is with taxpayer money. I don’t live in Shannon Park, I have a house on Tulip Street. I should be paying from my taxes to help create affordable units [at Shannon Park]. We all should. It’s a collective societal responsibility,” Austin argued.
Austin said the only way to truly fix the housing crisis is if provincial and federal governments come to the table with money and get involved in projects like the Shannon Park development to ensure affordable housing is meaningful.
What happens next?
In the end, council and most everyone who spoke at the public hearing agreed the Shannon Park proposal was good. Council approved a development permit but the project must still pass through several more layers of city bureaucracy.
If everything goes according to plan, Canada Lands’ Mary Jarvis predicted the company will start servicing the lots in 2024 and start releasing properties to the marketplace.
Obviously, however, that timeline could change. More information on the Shannon Park development is available here.
Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].