Housing is essential to community health and individual well-being. Having a safe and suitable place to live helps people feel secure, stay connected, and enjoy a better quality of life.
Through efforts and actions outlined in the Official Community Plan and the Housing Action Plan, the City is working to meet the housing needs of residents at all sectors of the housing wheel. These efforts are aligned with the community’s needs identified in the Housing Needs Report and in Provincial Housing Targets.
The Housing Wheel
The housing wheel approach recognizes that people’s housing needs can change over time, and that owning a home may not be the end goal for everyone. This approach helps the City look at housing on a system scale, understanding that different types of housing are needed to reflect the community’s diverse incomes and life stages, and to support residents as their needs change.
The City's Role
While many factors that affect housing demand are outside local government control, the City supports our community housing needs through:
- Setting land use direction in the Official Community Plan to guide how the community grows.
- Using regulations to shape where and what types of housing can be built.
- Streamlining processes for development applications to help deliver more homes, faster.
- Supporting homebuilders and developers by fostering a culture of cooperation.
- Creating policies and programs that support affordable and non-market housing.
- Working with other levels of government, non-profits, and private partners to increase housing supply.
- Advocating to provincial and federal governments on key housing issues.