COLD LAKE – With its eye on future economic growth in the Cold Lake region bringing a need for more housing, the City of Cold Lake Council directed administration to move forward with an application for grant funding through the recently announced Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF).
CAO Kevin Nagoya presented the grant opportunity to council during the July 11 council meeting, describing the opportunity to acquire approximately $5 million to be used towards incentivizing housing development in the city.
Managed through Canada Mortgage and Housing, “the fund’s objective is to accelerate the supply of housing across Canada, resulting in at least 100,000 more housing units permitted than would have occurred without the program, particularly in what has been termed the ‘missing middle,’ consisting of rowhouses, multiplexes and small apartment buildings,” according to background information provided by administration to council.
“I think there is opportunities for many municipalities across Canada to be able to access it if they have the information to be able to deliver on a pretty quick basis,” Nagoya said, explaining the need for a quick turnaround time on an application to meet the Aug. 18 deadline.
“It’s a question of how much you can increase your housing stock within your community, and that is basically trying to create supply for the community with houses that are built.”
With the recently completed Intermunicipal Development Plan, the Municipal Development Plan and the Land Use Bylaw all in place, Nagoya said the City is “sitting in a very good place in regards to those aspects for planning documents” – all of which are critical pieces. However, he said there is work to be done to attract housing development. “There’s areas we can improve.”
To qualify for HAF, the City must project the total number of dwelling units that they would expect to see built for a three-year period ending in 2026 without the HAF incentives being in place, and then project the total number of dwelling units that would be developed with the availability of the HAF incentives.
“Construction of new dwelling units has been erratic over the past 10 years, with a number of years during this period having growth in the range of 40-50 per cent with other years having negative growth in the range of 30-85 per cent. Administration determined that the average year-over-year growth rate from 2013-2022 was 18 per cent,” Nagoya explained.
Based on this, administration is forecasting 357 new dwelling units over the next three years. However, by developing housing incentives with the support of HAV funds, administration believes that total could increase to be in the neighbourhood of 611 new dwelling units, a 40 per cent increase.
“These projections are a conservative estimate of the number of dwelling units that the City could see constructed in the next several years, and are below the number of units constructed during the last housing boom between 2012-2014,” according to information supplied to council. In 2012, 229 new units came on stream, 2013 saw 283 new units, and 2014 yielded 446 new units.
In brainstorming for possible incentives that could be used to spur housing development, Nagoya said several things were taken into consideration, including that there are about 152 vacant lots in subdivisions currently. “From a growth perspective right now, you’ll probably use that inventory within the next couple of years.”
Additionally, he said one subdivision is actively developing new lots. There is an anticipated influx of residents expected due to 4 Wing Cold Lake development and proposed carbon capture projects in the region. The current residential vacant rate is estimated at 8 per cent according to the Government of Alberta 2021 statistics, which are the most recent stats available. There has also been a recent renewed interest by developers to develop residential and commercial areas within the city.
Nagoya presented council with 14 possible development incentive options for consideration and explained their possible impacts to the city and its operations. He explained that the action plan the City submits for HAV funding support will need to include a minimum of seven incentive programs in order to be considered.
Up for discussion were: a tax rebate on new unsold lots, reduce or rebate offsite levy payments, fee rebates, construction cost rebates, park development incentive, wastewater treatment plant investment to support future housing, a secondary suite investment, multi-unit housing incentive, infill development incentive, manufactured home incentive, disincentives for vacant or underutilized land, housing for vulnerable populations, city infrastructure development and revitalized stalled development areas incentive.
Each councillor weighed in on the options being presented with Nagoya reminding them that at this point they are only being considered as possible submissions as part of the grant application. If grant monies are received to support incentives, at that point the city would have to follow the regular protocols to get them approved.
“Because you’ve submitted the grant application doesn’t mean that you have passed legislation yet because that has its own process.”
“Our housing stock is moving in terms of people want residential housing. We only have one developer pushing dirt right now. I think we need to come in and focus our grant on residential and increasing the housing stock...,” Mayor Craig Copeland said in wrapping up the discussion. “To me, keep it simple, about four of them (incentives) and we should move on this right away.”
Council provided the go-ahead for administration to pursue the grant and provided administration with some latitude as to what incentive options be proposed in the application based on some of the input from council members.
“What I would ask is some flexibility from council as we put together this grant... Let us work out the details and we will come back to council if we get something approved and then we’ll work from there,” Nagoya said.
