Residential building permits issued in Guelph fell during the early stages of the pandemic and somewhat bounced back last year. As that rebound continues, Mayor Cam Guthrie is eager to see them reach new heights in an effort to address affordability concerns.
“It’s important that we don’t look to just rebound to historic levels,” he said, suggesting funding announcements from the province made Wednesday, combined with the city’s efforts to refine processes, will help to achieve that. “We need to rebound in a different way, which is making it easier for the supply to increase for new builds within the city.”
The goal, he noted, is to generally increase housing affordability in the wake of local housing sales surpassing the $1 million average last month and falling just shy in November.
Though too early to say for certain, the number of new home building permits issued by the city is likely to continue building strength in 2022, believes Krista Walkey, the city’s general manager of planning and building services.
Permits for more than 1,000 new residential units to be built throughout Guelph were issued in six of the seven years before the arrival of COVID-19. That number dropped to 736 in 2020, a previous staff report shows.
Walkey said initial estimates for 2021 show permits for 829 new residential units were issued.
“We’re still doing our year-end calculations,” she said. “We do see it coming back up, which is a good thing.”
The annual average number of new residential unit building permits issued between 2008 and 2020 is 992.
Of the new unit permits issued in 2020, there were 216 for accessory units, 198 for townhouses, 180 for apartments, 104 for single-detached homes and 38 for semi-detached homes.
“The pandemic obviously had an impact,” Guthrie said, explaining other mayors have noted the same in their communities. “The common thread among everyone is that it’s starting to rebound.”
In addition to permits for new units, the city also saw an uptick in permits issued for a wide range of renovations and property enhancements since the pandemic began, Walkey noted. Such projects include interior and exterior renovations and expansions, as well as new decks, pools and carports.
“We did have some different types of permits as well, so our overall permit number was not down significantly, but the mix of housing units was down,” she explained.
Guelph is provincially mandated to grow in population, reaching 203,000 people by 2051, though city council is considering asking for that number to be increased to 208,000 due to the recent annexation of the Dolime Quarry lands and planned mixed use development there.
A motion seeking the increase was approved by council last week and is awaiting endorsement from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
During the Jan. 17 meeting council also received a new growth strategy for the city which, if ultimately adopted and incorporated into the official plan later this year, would see 46 per cent of new residents accommodated within the existing built-up area through intensification, with the rest built in greenfield areas such as the Clair-Maltby, Guelph Innovation District and Dolime quarry lands areas.
Under the strategy, the overall mix of housing in the city would reach 53 per cent high density, 25 per cent medium density and 12 per cent low density, with 10 per cent of residents accommodated through accessory units.
In order to achieve that, maximum building heights in various areas of the city are proposed to be increased by two storeys.
As for new builds, 57 per cent are to be high density, 32 per cent medium density and 18 per cent low density, with three per cent of the new population housed in accessory units.
About 15,200 new housing units are needed by 2051 to handle a population of 208,000.
