Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21 st Century

1. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century Presentation by CHBA – [Name] to the Municipal Council of [Name] June, 2008

2. Housing affordability and choice are essential to community prosperity in the 21st century. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

3. Purposes of today’s presentation: • Present main results of a report by Altus Clayton. • Highlight implications for our community. • Determine next steps in responding to these implications. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

4. Who We Are: • Represent new home builders, home renovators, and residential land developers • Active in [name of municipality] since [date]. • Contribute to community prosperity through construction, business investment and participation in planning. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

5. What We Do: • Plan new subdivisions and infill housing developments in detail, operating within provincial and municipal regulations. • Service new homes in subdivisions and major development sites with local infrastructure… water, sewers, roads, sidewalks. • Pay for all or most off-site infrastructure to serve new development. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

6. Why Altus Clayton Believes a Fresh Perspective on Community Prosperity is Needed: • Canada emerging into long period of progressively tighter labour markets. • Competition for skilled and talented people becoming tougher nationally and locally. • Housing affordability and choice: critical elements to attracting and retaining talented people, especially families. • Traditional methods of attracting investment are not going to work nearly as well as in the past. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

7. Key findings: • In the emerging “knowledge-based” economy, communities attract investment by providing attractive, talented and diverse local labour force… the “creative class”. • Location decisions of talented individuals much more important. • Essential to build vibrant and attractive communities with a good quality of life. • Need to foster well-functioning housing markets that offer housing affordability and choice, especially for family households. • Growth not a cost to the community, but a long-term investment, particularly as population ages. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century

8. City planning policies can directly contribute to attractiveness of our community for talented and creative people by: • Improving time-horizon and certainty of planning processes. • Providing adequate amount of urban infrastructure investment, timed to support municipal plans and the pace of development; • Creating new methods to pay for urban infrastructure that are fair and balanced, and avoid introducing distortions into the market; and • Working with other orders of government to ensure that right types of expenditures are funded from the appropriate tax sources. Housing Affordability and Choice: Community Prosperity in the 21st Century