Affordable

How do we make a living in Prince Edward County affordable? The fundamentals are working against us. There are a finite number of homes in the County, and the stock is growing slowly. Many homes are being converted to accommodate visitors rather than tenants. And this dwindling rental stock isn’t being replenished. So increasingly, the folks who work in Prince Edward County can’t afford a place to live here.

There are things local policymakers can do. Currently, the regional social services agency is offering direct cash incentives of up to $150,000 to kickstart the development of affordable housing in the County.

Last year, the County enacted new rules facilitating the creation of second suites and garden suites— looking to free up underutilized housing stock for use as apartments and rental units. Grants are also available through the Prince Edward – Lennox and Addington Social Services to do this.

This will help. But there is more Shire Hall can and should do. First and foremost, Council and Shire Hall must make an urgent priority of encouraging and rallying residential homebuilders to invest in this County again. Currently, a committee of County staff, councillors and developers are meeting to understand and propose solutions to the obstacles that block new homebuilding. We must pay close attention to their findings and act on their recommendations.

These problems must be fixed. Our competitive disadvantages must be reduced. It is impossible to divert a portion of new homebuilding toward an affordable mix when the stream is bone dry.

Every council member and Shire Hall employee must become a promoter and enabler of the County as a place to live—a place to develop, a place to invest. Quibbling over the pennies involved in tinkering with development and connection charges is utter foolishness in a nogrowth housing market. Much better to align these charges with our neighbours in Quinte West and Belleville and move on. When the market improves, these revenues will follow.

Instead, Shire Hall’s resources must be directed to clearing the way to encourage more residential development. Only when a steady flow of new homes comes onstream can we begin to prescribe the mix and range of housing that fits this community’s needs.

There is another committee whose work will have a direct impact on the affordability of living in Prince Edward County. The waterworks committee is a group of residents, staff and council members examining the broken finances of this user-funded utility.

Water bills have doubled and tripled over the past decade and a half. And yet the cost of the system continues to exceed the money it takes in. Each year, the waterworks department is forced to borrow the equivalent of a payday loan to cover its losses. Like a delusional gambler,we pay back these loans from money needed to keep the lights on, without changing our behaviour. Before long we are back at the payday loan wicket, needing more cash.

For the second time in six years, a waterworks committee is looking to fix this. It is examining operations, and costs as well as the age and condition of its pipes and pumps. It is starting with the County’s 20-year plan to rehabilitate and maintain the waterworks system. It is applying assumptions of growth and financing variables. From this work, it intends to compute a new waterworks rate structure—an increase to your water bill that will restore the utility to financial health, and perhaps keep it in the black.

That is one way to look at the problem. But we’ve done that already. It didn’t work very well. Despite jacking up water bills, the waterworks system sprung a leak a year or so after it established a new rate structure. It has been leaking money every since.

There is another way to look at the problem, however. Rather than tally all the costs and divide the total by the number of users—the committee could come at the problem the other way around. It could instead decide what is affordable and adapt its system to fit. It could define a waterworks rate structure—something that consumers could afford to pay, and then reconstruct the waterworks finances to fit that rate structure.

It is how we do it in our own lives. We don’t base our finances on our needs or desires—even if they are spelled out neatly in a 20-year plan. We don’t tally up all the things we would like and then spend the money to buy them. Instead, we examine our income, our savings, our borrowing capacity and we make choices about what we want and what we must forgo.

Most of us spend what we can afford—or at least we try to. It is certainly a radical concept for a government- managed utility. But here is the thing—we know the last method didn’t work—shouldn’t we consider a different approach?

rick@wellingtontimes.ca

CORRECTION
At its September 29 Committee of the Whole meeting, council rejected a proposal to enhance parking facilities at 55 King Street in Picton, contrary to what was reported in this column last week. Sorry.