Too many obstacles to build affordable housing, developer says

A local developer says there is too much red-tape when it comes to building affordable housing.

Chris McNabb is the owner of the Kitchener-based development company King Street Holdings. Over the past decade his company has built 600 affordable housing units in Ontario, 175 of which are in Waterloo Region.

"When we first started we were building within six months of finding a piece of property," McNabb said. "Now it's taking two and three years to get through the planning... it's a long and drawn out process."

McNabb says governmental road blocks make investing in affordable housing challenging. 

Finding quality land within the right building zones, being taxed on government grants and shouldering the costs of re-developing exsisting properties are some of the obstacles, McNabb said.

"The cost of building rental units is very high," he added.

Private affordable housing

As many as half of the affordable housing units in Waterloo Region are built and maintained by private developers, with the region providing support and subsidies to the projects.

"The Region of Waterloo has been very forward-thinking in this market," McNabb said. "They use the funding available and their own funds to subsidize and add additional housing stock that is much needed in this region."

King Street Holdings builds one and two bedroom units, and houses tenants using a rent-geared-to-income model.

 "The need doesn't go away," McNabb said, "So we fill a niche by providing additional housing that otherwise wouldn't be built."