‘Harmful’ bill hurts affordable housing and escalates taxes in HRM: municipal leaders

HALIFAX, N.S. — Surprise provincial legislation aimed at speeding up housing development in HRM would instead dramatically increase property taxes and could damage affordable housing programs, municipal officials argued Monday.

“This legislation is unnecessary and it’s harmful,” Mayor Mike Savage told the legislature’s law amendments committee.  “Let’s be clear: this will raise taxes for municipal taxpayers.”

On Thursday, council barely got a heads-up that the Progressive Conservative government introduced a bill with nearly a dozen changes to the Halifax Regional Municipality Charter and the Housing in the Halifax Regional Municipality Act.

The bill will give some developers expedited services, including freezing all municipal permit and development fees.

Premier Tim Houston said last week that “this is a time for bold action; this is a time that we’re moving forward.”

The bill would ease restrictions on floor-plan size for highrise buildings and accelerate development approvals. It also gives the housing minister the authority to make decisions on developments in HRM without a recommendation from the executive panel on housing or a request from the municipality.

Savage said it enables a single person — Housing Minister John Lohr — who doesn’t have a thorough knowledge of HRM or planning to single-handedly approve projects without accountability or justification.

“I don’t know how you would protect the environment, how do you protect good design, if one person with no planning knowledge (is making the decision),” Savage said. “We don’t want to look back in 20 years at some development and say, ‘yeah, that was built in a hurry by a new convoluted process.’”

He pointed out that there are 11,000 units approved and ready to go right now, with another 250,000 units that can be developed as-of-right.

Hearty discussion happening right now around @nsgov‘s latest announcement that will introduce a bill that will override some @hfxgov rules around development. Spoiler alert! HRM is not happy.

Oct. 16, 2023 – Law Amendments Proceedings – YouTube https://t.co/4JUExwDe9Y

— Downtown Halifax’s Navigator Outreach Program (@StreetoutreachR) October 16, 2023

It was easy for Coun. Kathryn Morse to crystalize what it feels like to be a HRM councillor right now. “I’m furious and I’m hopping mad,” she said.

She was not alone. Councillors urged the province to press pause and called the legislation bullying, reckless and dangerous.

Jump in property taxes

Cathie O’Toole, HRM’s chief administrative officer, said cutting development hurts HRM’s ability to pay for growth.

“This is problematic at a time when the growth rates (in HRM) are one of the highest in the country,” she said.

Growth in the suburbs is particularly expensive when infrastructure like water systems needs to be installed.

“If growth does not pay for growth, then existing taxpayers and utility ratepayers pay for the cost of new growth,” O’Toole said.

For example, to pay for water, wastewater and transportation infrastructure in the Port Wallace development area in Dartmouth alone would mean a four per cent increase to municipal taxes “and that’s just one development I’m using as an example,” she said.

Unfettered growth without proper planning and consideration creates public safety, financial and environmental risks, she said.

‘Dangerous’ with no way out

Coun. Lisa Blackburn (Middle/Upper Sackville -Beaver Bank-Lucasville) came armed with an example of her own: Beaver Bank, which has only one main road. There is a wildfire risk and concerns about evacuation routes, she said.

“We can’t be so focused on fixing one problem that we create an even bigger one in the process,” Blackburn said. “This is not community building, this is just building structures. Growth without infrastructure to support it is dangerous.

Coun. Sam Austin (Dartmouth Centre) said a clause around preventing municipalities from charging new fees creates uncertainty for the municipality’s density bonusing program, which charges developers of large projects a fee that goes into a pot and is distributed to local non-profits to build affordable housing. Due to ambiguity in the legislation, density bonusing and inclusionary zoning are at risk, he said.

Austin added that the 20-plus people in tents in Halifax’s Grand Parade don’t have a place in for-market housing, and the housing options they need are put at risk by the legislation.

We’re not the problem here

Several councillors pointed out that development fees are among the lowest in the country and their permitting process has gotten a lot faster. 

“I know that you know that municipalities in Nova Scotia are not the roadblock to housing,” argued Coun. Pam Lovelace (Hammonds Plains-St. Margarets). “Many developers that are not building to their capacity right now identify market forces as the fundamental barrier to building, such as labour shortages, cost of borrowing, cost of materials, ongoing supply chain challenges.”

She added that accelerated out-migration of people and workers in rural Nova Scotia to HRM seems to be the province’s plan.

Bill doesn’t go far enough

The only developer to speak in front of the committee was Peter Polley, owner of the Polycorp Group of Companies. He said he’s been building housing in HRM for 30 years and one of the reasons there is a housing crisis is because governments have not made housing a priority and are “all responsible for this failure.”

“Hearing HRM complain about the lack of consultation is quite rich,” Polley said. “HRM doesn’t engage in a meaningful consultation with the people and businesses who actually build housing.”

He said most developers won’t speak out because of fear of reprisal from HRM and that the only road out of the housing crisis “is with new housing construction done by the private sector.”

High costs and shortages are not excuses for governments to do nothing; rather, they should be reasons for the government to do much more to support private-sector housing, Polley said.

He said the bill could go further and that there needs to be more provincial and federal intervention.

Polycorp’s medium-density project in Spryfield that would house upward of 3,000 people is idle because it’s zoned for large-lot, single-family homes and trying to make progress to change that is incredibly slow, Polley said.

He said he was told to wait for the suburban plan, which is expected to be done in 2028.

“’Please hold until 2028′ doesn’t sound like we’re in a crisis,” Polley said.

After failed attempts by NDP and Liberal MLAs to pause the legislation or defer it back to staff for collaboration with HRM on Monday, the committee voted to send it to the House for third reading.