Affordable Housing – Challenges and Constraints for Local Governance in Canada:
Housing and sustainable development is interdisciplinary research that requires cross-functional knowledge sharing to address operational and policy issues—limitations in understanding housing dynamics and policy design and implementation lead to unintended negative consequences. Policy development for affordable housing requires better conceptual understanding, determination of normative objectives and operational constraints, and the effectiveness of governance structure.
This paper investigates operational and governance barriers to housing affordability in the Canadian context. The article adopted a key informant interview method to analyze qualitative feedback from technical and administrative experts from municipalities across Canada. The study helped to understand the contextual challenges in housing affordability in Canadian municipalities. The study confirms that the weaknesses in governance structure, distribution of responsibilities, and allocation of resources limit municipalities’ capacity to deal with housing affordability. Pro-growth objectives will not solve housing affordability challenges. It is important to adopt human-centered and contextually relevant housing policies. To overcome operational constraints, municipalities need more significant provincial and federal financial and constitutional assistance to meet capacity challenges and to guide a unified approach to meet sustainability targets.
Rising population, weakening economy, increasing population, low housing supply, and ineffective housing policies are fading Canadians’ dream of affordable housing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian housing market has witnessed a sharp price increase. The province of Ontario has experienced an over 60 percent increase in average house prices between Jan 2020 and December 2021 (CREA, 2023). The Habitat for Humanity Canada (2022) housing affordability survey found housing cost is the third most concern for Canadians after inflation and healthcare. People believe that affordable housing is crucial for social stability.
Key barriers, including lack of housing supply, NIMBY (Not-in-my-back-yard) sentiments, and discrimination, contribute to the affordability crisis. A crisis of this scale needs collective action by the governments of all tiers, individuals, non-profits, and corporations. Municipalities would require a more significant role in assessing their local needs and developing housing policies for people who need it (Habitat Canada, 2022).
The International Council for Science defines the urban environment as “the natural, built and institutional elements that determine the physical, mental and social health and wellbeing of people who live in cities and towns” (ICSU, 2011, p. 8). Which makes housing an integral part of urban structure, and operates in an urban system of social values, environmental implications, and institutional and governance structure (Scott & Storper, 2015). Housing affordability is crucial for the right to suitable and adequate housing for everyone (UN-Habitat, 2016).
It makes housing an interdisciplinary complex urban function that can be better understood by developing a conceptual and theoretical framework of housing policy adaption and actualization, including the process of translation and assemblage of policies and ideas that move through time and space (Baker & Evans, 2016; Clarke et al., 2020). Therefore, a widespread adaptation of similar policies across diverse markets will not be able to deal with contextual housing affordability issues (Cheung et al., 2019). It makes the housing sector’s role pivotal in achieving overall urban sustainability (Tupenaite et al., 2017).
Sustainability requires reconceptualizing policy narrative, transformation in operation and governance structure, and integration between institutions at a local scale (Gustafsson & Krantz, 2021). Subsequently, multidisciplinary knowledge sharing would be necessary to address operational and policy issues for sustainable housing (Silva et al., 2015). Such topics are sensitive to the socio-spatial context that compels an understanding of existing practices concerning objectives, values, and motivations, making it highly uncertain and dynamic (Verweij & Trell, 2019; De Roo & Silva, 2010).
Consequently, it is difficult to view sustainable housing from a singular disciplinary lens, concept, theory, and model (Pike et al., 2011). It requires context context-specific innovative approach. Innovation is a non-linear path that requires continuous improvement through a multidimensional and multilateral interactive feedback process (Edquist, 2006). Thus, constant innovation can help manage socioeconomic and environmental priorities in pursuing sustainable development goals (Schiederig et al., 2012; Forestier & Kim, 2020).