Fredericton closer to allowing single room occupancy rentals

The City of Fredericton is exploring options to help ease the city's housing crisis and allowing for single room occupancy developments may be one way to tackle the problem. 

More than 200 people responded to a survey on rooming houses and a large majority said they were comfortable with a development of that kind in their neighbourhood. 

Almost 90 per cent of the people who responded to the survey said they were concerned about the lack of rental supply in Fredericton. The survey was presented to the city's economic vitality committee Thursday. 

"We have a market that is being flooded with executive or luxury units and what we're trying to incentivize here is, there are other design options," said Jennifer Brown, the consultant who led the survey commissioned by the city's affordable housing committee.  

Fredericton has a vacancy rate below two per cent and doesn't currently zone for single room occupancies -- one room rentals with shared amenities that are more affordable than apartments. 

The information gathered in this survey will help develop a zoning bylaw that will allow for them.  

"From a social aspect, we're trying to create an environment where everyone can be housed and having a zoning bylaw that backs that up," said Brown. "So if somebody comes to the table with a reasonable proposal that there's a way to process that proposal."

But then, there's the question of getting developers to build them. 

One way may be to create incentives - something the city hasn't done very much in the past. 

"It is a contentious and a very hard issue to address," said Coun. Bruce Grandy, chair of the economic vitality committee (formerly the development committee) about incentives. 

But councillors did discuss the idea of bonus incentives that could work for this type of housing.

"Maybe you get an additional storey in your building if it's filled with SRO units," said Coun. Kate Rogers, chair of the affordable housing committee."We've just started going down that path of bonus zoning."

Ken Forrest, director of growth and community services at the city, said there have been inquiries in the past from developers interested in this type of housing. 

"This is something that would be new to us and there has been a few expressions of interest," he said. "Now I think it's trying to marry those things together and trying to get some projects in the ground."

A full report on single room occupancies will come back to council in February and then work will begin on creating the bylaw, though it may not be finished in time for the municipal election in May.