Unserious

The crisis of affordable living in Prince Edward County must first be defined, according to a committee of council last week. “We need to know the problem we are trying to solve,” explained Councillor Phil St- Jean (Picton) to several nodding heads on the Zoom meeting on Thursday. “Then you can formulate a plan to tackle the problem.”

The councillor said his motion was mischaracterized by this columnist last week. “This is not about one particular solution to affordable housing,” explained St-Jean to the committee of council. According to the Picton councillor, the problem is that people don’t understand what affordable housing means. His motion, he said, was about “defining clearly, for Council and the public, what is affordable housing in Prince Edward County. What does it mean?”

Never mind that every social service agency and housing ministry in the land has defined and calculated affordability and its impacts over and over again. Never mind that the County Community Foundation’s Vital Signs report spells out in full detail the crisis in housing affordability for both buyers and renters every few years. Never mind that the municipality felt it was an urgent enough issue in 2016 that it made “Foster an affordable, healthy, livable community for all” among its top strategic priorities. Set that and all the other reports, news stories, data that have shone a brilliant white-hot light on the crisis of affordability in Prince Edward County for nearly a decade aside.

Does the councillor—and some of his colleagues— actually believe the challenge before them is one of problem definition? For whom does the comprehension of this crisis remain elusive?

Certainly not the folks who must commute hours to work here earning the minimum wage. Not the working families who rely upon our foodbanks to get by each month. Certainly not the seniors on fixed incomes who struggle to hang onto their home as their taxes and waterworks fees escalate year after year.

Anyone who has been turned down for a mortgage understands unaffordability. Anyone who has tried to rent an apartment or home in the County understands unaffordability. Anyone who scans the real estate listings knows what it means.

A better question is: Who doesn’t understand that the County is now unaffordable to all but the wealthy? Who doesn’t understand that when the median price of a home in the County trades at more than $600,000, Prince Edward County is not an option for working families? That the median income of $32,000 per year is insufficient to carry a mortgage of this size? Or a monthly rent of $2,000.

Yes, it may be argued that some nuance may be obscured by statistics. People of good faith can disagree on the interpretation of the data on the margins. But at some point, the evidence piles up so high and wide that it is absurd to the point of dereliction of duty to suggest that Council must study the definition of affordability in the County before it can “formulate a plan to tackle the problem.” We passed that marker several years ago.

Other council members supported the councillor’s request for more problem definition by suggesting it might help create a repository of affordable housing data. To be updated quarterly. To provide a baseline of data to inform policymaking. Others were okay with this objective, but unsure who should manage this data repository—suggesting that it is the County’s Municipal Housing Corporation’s job to do so. And round it went.

So what is going on here?

Perhaps “defining the problem” is the sum total of Council’s ambitions with regard to affordable housing in the County? Perhaps there is no incentive to go further.

Perhaps the desire to continue defining the problem year after year is because talking is easier than doing. More precisely, talking about affordable housing is popular. Creating affordable housing isn’t.

When a local homebuilder proposed a new neighbourhood of new townhomes on the north end of Picton recently, dozens of ratepayers mobilized in opposition. It is understandably daunting to an elected politician.

It may also explain why they will eventually, though they deny it now, entertain notions of compelling residential homebuilders to provide affordable housing rather than do the things that might ease the supply/demand mismatch. Developers make easy villains. Deflect the blowback.

But this isn’t leadership. It is purposeful dithering.

We have been here, spinning our wheels, for a decade. Study. Review. Repeat.

Shire Hall staff have promised a report by June.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca