Affordable Housing In Canada

Affordable housing refers to housing units that are affordable by that section of society whose income is or below the median household income. For example, affordable housing should address the housing needs of lower or middle income households. And for sustainable communities, it is one that is economically, environmentally, and socially healthy and resilient.. According to the Western Australia Council of Social Services (WACOSS): "Social sustainability occurs when the formal and informal processes; systems; structures; and relationships actively support the capacity of current and future generations to create healthy and livable communities.” As we can tell, all affordable housing, sustainable community, and social sustainability are

strongly connected with one and the other in so many ways:
First, it can be argued that the relatively high cost of housing affects more people than just lower income workers and/or unemployed people.

If housing is not affordable, like in Vancouver, many people are forced to live far away from where they work just so they can have a home. In this way, the further you have to go for the necessary goods, such as food, supplies, or even go to work, the more stressful life is. Why? It is because many of the very basic and needed services are not available nearby, such as hospitals and various other medical services, this forces people from remote locations to travel long distance to have some of their basic needs met. Affordability has many linkages which is what makes it an essential part of planning and supporting a sustainable community. If the community cannot provide a sustainable living environment to those people living in there, how can the community be

sustainable?
According to the textbook, many people who work in Toronto can no longer afford to live there as Toronto has grown and the supply of affordable housing has shrunk. And families who pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing are considered cost burdened and as a result having difficulty affording other necessities such as food and clothing. And as the families are no longer or having a difficult time on their financial problems because of housing, the level of community sustainability would decrease and the community is not considering as livable to them, the social sustainability drops. One of the reasons is that the decrease of ability to live. Those families have to leave their original housing area and move to another community which they can afford. In this way, it would be more far away from their friends, working places, schools and so on. If people cannot live in a location accessible to jobs, school, services or family. The transportation alternatives to either urban or remote area would decrease and it would just make their living more difficult and not simpler. Health could affect as well due to the distance to medical services and lesser time to take care themselves. As live become more and more stressful, the mental health problem could occur.
The major challenge in Canada for those people with low or moderate incomes is the supply of affordability rental housing.

The housing affordability crisis has been slowly developing over decades. This implies that young households – in particular young families who want to get their feet on the owner-occupied housing ladder, are hardest hit by the crisis. (Housing Supply Working Group) It is clear, historically, that even with significant private sector rental development, there will always be a need for some government role in assisting low-income households with housing affordability and other income problems. The impact of lack in rental supply and the consequent upward the pressure on rents is pressuring on all levels of government for assistance to low income households so that they can afford suitable and adequate housing. And the household formation will be delayed as young people are unable to find affordable rental accommodation if the shortfall units of rental housings keep remaining. (Housing Supply Working

Group)
The opportunity is to provide affordable rental housing to people. The government can subsidized rental housing or encourage more investor to re-maintain some of the old building, which can save costs than re-build, to provide lower rental price to all people. And government can also encourage people with low or moderate incomes involve into the secondary rental market, such as basement apartments and apartments over stores. (Department for Communities and Local Government)
The three most significant factors affecting housing policy are the numbers of population increase, economic impact, and the impatient housing promotions.
The supply of housing influence by the increasing number of population and immigrations. The more increase in population, the more the demand of housing. The price of housing could increase because of that. In this way, the supply of housing could not satisfy the demand and the number of population. This affect the government to build more new house and develop more area for people and it affected the housing policy.
As the market mechanism is the main provider and allocator of housing, the world economic market is one of the main determination to the financial situation to most median or lower income householders or tenants. In recent year, the 2007-08 financial crisis has a major impact on the whole world, which definitely caused a lot of job and living issues to the householders or tenants. It just made them more difficult and suffer to afford their house which the price was labeled before the crisis because now their income might be lower or even lost their job but they still need to buy the same amount of house loan every month. And more and more people losing their job due to the crisis and the price of housing is no longer affordable, the amount of homeless are increasing. This would led to an unhealthy social and decrease the level of sustainable community and social sustainable. The government has to adjust the housing policy and provide more subsidize to those people.
The impatient and rush housing promotions affected the housing policy and the sustainable community which is the role of urban planners in Canada area. Some blame the problems of affordability of housing on overzealous municipal land planning. As the urban planners left the region with least affordable housing and some of the worst traffic congestion in Canada. The 1996” Livable Region Strategic Plan” were too narrow in their focus on minimizing automobile driving. And due to the protection of green spaces, farm lands and so on, the growth of development had been limited and it had caused the escalation of price. (Hulchanski, J. D)