City council may soon set policies to waive development charges (DCs) for non-profit group projects, such as the creation of affordable housing.
City staff laid out the process in a recently released report, in response to direction from council earlier this year.
Rather than have requests for a break on DCs go to council on an ad hoc basis, which is what happens now, they can be handled at the staff level, states the report.
However, council would need to put several pieces in place first – policies that outline requirements for recipients and, of course, funding allocations. Council would also need to formally delegate the responsibility to staff, much in the way it has for other programs.
“It’s more of an efficient process because staff are responsible for execution and the operation, and council is the governing body making those kinds of policy decisions,” city treasurer Tara Baker told GuelphToday.
Traditionally, council has approved grants equal to development charges for affordable housing projects. Baker believes those and similar requests could be funnelled through the Affordable Housing Financial Incentive Program (AHFIP), Community Investment Strategy (CIS) and Brownfield Community Improvement Plan (CIP) initiatives.
“All three of those programs have the ability to waive development charges in lieu of a grant,” she said, explaining that process would “ensure the grants are being awarded to developments in the community that align with city objectives.”
On Monday, council agreed to move $1 million from a pair of reserve funds into the Affordable Housing Reserve.
In explaining how such a process would work, Baker pointed to last month’s awarding of $200,000 to 26 organizations, unincorporated groups and individuals in the first phase of the Emergency Fund program. Council set policies outlining the requirements to receive funds and established a budget, then staff handled applications and awarded the funds based on council’s policies.
“The gap that remains is the staffing to actually create the program requirements and having that approved by council,” Baker said, noting the policy piece is already in place for the brownfield CIP, and a contract position was created to do the same for the CIS but “because of COVID, that’s a little bit delayed. It hasn’t been the top priority at this point.”
A policy for affordable housing would need to be created from scratch.
Though there are established requirements for brownfield projects in order to have their DCs waived, each individual application must still be endorsed by council under the current process.
It will be up to council to decide during the 2021 budget process if it would like to standardize the process of waiving DCs for non-profit organization projects.
