Gander mayor says plans are already in the works for $4.35M of federal housing money

A national plan aimed at building more than 750,000 homes across Canada will soon build a few hundred homes in Gander, and the mayor says affordability is crucial.

Percy Farwell says a housing needs assessment is in the works for the town, which the federal government announced this week would receive $4.35 million from its housing accelerator fund.

"We certainly know that we have challenges on both fronts both in capacity and affordability," Farwell told CBC News. "That's going to continue into the foreseeable future. We have to be tackling these challenges in a real way now in order to try to address them going forward."

The money aims to fast-track 110 units over the next three years and 750 units over the next 10 years along with several local initiatives such as increasing affordable housing, removing zoning barriers and establishing a municipal land bank.

Missing middle

Farwell said the plan also focuses on building "missing middle" housing options.

"Missing middle would be forms of housing that are medium-density type of units: triplexes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units within existing spaces and so on, to fit more residences on the same available land," Farwell said. 

"One of the solutions to increasing both affordability and capacity is to get more units per square metre of land. Some of it's using regulatory and zoning tools, and some of it is incentivizing the development of that kind of housing as well."

Outside the box

Farwell said the town's housing situation has changed over the decades.

"We have to realize that this is 2024. It's not the 1980s," he said. "There are challenges. There's a housing environment now that didn't exist then. We have to be looking at and willing to explore and implement new methods and solutions."

CBC Newfoundland Morning9:41Gander has secured millions in federal housing funding and has big plans for the money

Rising housing costs have prompted serious concerns about the supply and affordability of housing in Gander. This week, the town announced it has been awarded $4.35 million in federal funding for an ambitious plan to build at least 200 new units over the next four years. Mayor Percy Farwell speaks with the CBC's Martin Jones.

Farwell says there are changes coming to some regulations in the community, and some neighbourhoods in Gander will start to look different over the next few years.

"[Developers] would not have to go through an extensive approval process in order to build a duplex or a fourplex in a neighbourhood. That requires some discussion and some acceptance of your community. In some cases [it] will make a neighbourhood somewhat different than what it was," he said.

"We have to keep in mind too, that we will retain a fairly robust regulatory regime. It's not building slum housing in high-end neighbourhoods. It's integrating some other forms of housing into neighbourhoods that perhaps previously [didn't] exist here because they couldn't exist there."

Already started

While new buildings will take time to show up, he said, some of the backend regulatory work has already begun. 

"We weren't waiting until it was confirmed that we were getting some of this money from the federal government to start to tackle this problem. With or without the money from the federal government, we have to be tackling the problem."

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