An expert on affordable housing for rural communities says there have to be some significant changes to encourage developers to build affordable housing.
Nancy Orr, from Nancy Orr and Associates, is a project coordinator and facilitator of action who provides strategic support to organizations.
She says if you're a developer, you're struggling right now to get a work force just as much as everyone else is and anything you build, will sell.
But she points out building affordable or high density housing has a lot more risk and takes a lot more time.
“So if I'm a builder or developer in a market economy, I'm not going to take the path that is the most challenging, going to cost me the most and give me the most headaches when I'm already short and I can build the other kind of housing a whole lot easier. So that's where I think it's got to take a champion, it's got to take a partnership,” said Orr.
Orr says we definitely need the private sector, but if you bring a not-for-profit in with it, then it's possible to encourage and enable.
Orr maintains, municipalities have to think just a little bit differently about how they're coming up with those models, recognizing the economy that we're in right now.
"So if you're going to build an apartment building and we come up with an agreement that one floor of it's going to be affordable, then figure what you are going to lose on that, then we can figure out ways to offset that cost to enable you and encourage you to do that.”
