City of Waterloo announces plan for affordable housing: affordable for who?

With affordable housing being a hot topic in recent times, the city of Waterloo started to make some moves to build these affordable homes. One of the main locations that the city was looking to leverage was the north end of Waterloo, with the land in question located on the north end of University Avenue East, near RIM Park. The area has the potential to support up to 700 new units, many of which would be affordable.

Around the end of April, the city approved the first steps and began the consulting process for this property. Documents outlined and suggested that this space has the potential for up to 480 stacked townhouse units and around 250 apartment units capping off in and around 730 units. The plan for these units is to include a healthy range of incomes which includes both rental and ownership units.

After further consideration and consultation, the city concluded that they are interested in expanding some of these building plans to include not only extra stories, but also to make the building multi-purpose. These new plans would include commercial and office space on the bottom floors of these buildings. 

What does this mean for students? Once again, it seems like the city is isolating the housing crisis in our region to regular working city inhabitants, not students. Don’t get me wrong, the plan to build more affordable housing within the region is a great idea and a step in the right direction. But, deciding to build these affordable homes, or for a better phrase, affordable renting units, in such a remote part of the city like north Waterloo, that on the best of days takes around 40 minutes to use public transit, and a 15-minute commute via car, it is clear that the city is not considering students when making decisions regarding the location these of affordable home decisions. 

It is also interesting to take note of the ambiguity associated with the term affordable housing. With the median average income in Ontario being just over $60,000, affordability for the average individual is much different than affordability for a student who only works full time for four months in the summer due to the heavy workload of full-time studies at the university level. Again, this begs the question, affordable for who? 

So maybe when the city is making plans and discussing affordable housing, they should be more clear on who this is affordable for. On top of that, it seems like the municipality is not interested in providing actual affordable housing solutions for students in a region that is home to two major universities and a college — seems counterintuitive to me.