Housing affordability is no longer simply a housing issue. In rural communities, it is increasingly an economic development, workforce, and community sustainability issue.
That is one of the central messages of Social-Enterprise-Led Models for Enhancing Housing Affordability, a new white paper commissioned by Launch Kawartha and authored by the housing innovation team at SHS Inc. The report explores how organizations like ours, social enterprises, businesses, and community partners can contribute to addressing the growing housing challenges facing rural communities.
Rural Housing Challenges Require Different Solutions
Rural communities face housing pressures that can look very different from those in larger urban centres. Limited rental supply can make it difficult for employers to attract and retain workers. Seniors and smaller households may struggle to find appropriately sized homes, while families can face a shortage of affordable larger units. Rising home prices, limited infrastructure, servicing constraints and restrictive zoning can further limit the creation of new housing.
The consequences extend well beyond the housing market. When people cannot find appropriate and affordable places to live, communities can struggle to attract workers, support businesses and maintain economic growth.
The report argues that addressing these challenges requires looking at housing as a system rather than searching for a single solution.
Four Ingredients for Housing Affordability
At the centre of the report is a framework identifying four interconnected conditions necessary to create affordable housing: capital, capacity, land and attainability.
Capital provides the financial resources required to move projects forward. Capacity represents the people, expertise and organizations capable of delivering those projects. Land provides the physical foundation for development. Attainability encompasses the mechanisms that ultimately reduce housing costs to levels residents can afford.
A weakness in any one of these areas can prevent otherwise promising housing projects from moving forward.
Importantly, this framework also broadens the conversation about who can help solve the housing challenge.
Innovation Is Already Happening
In the report, we examine six categories of social-enterprise-led solutions: financing and capital innovation; ownership and tenure innovation; alternative or community-driven housing; localized development capacity; construction workforce and capacity; and land access and stewardship.
Examples range from community bonds and revolving investment funds to shared-equity homeownership, rent-to-own programs, tiny-home communities, development incubators, modular construction and community land trusts.
The lesson is not that every community should adopt every model. Rather, communities can learn from approaches already being tested elsewhere and adapt them to local circumstances.
The Ottawa Community Land Trust's Housing Forever Bonds, for example, demonstrate how community investment can help finance affordable housing while generating both financial and social returns. The initiative aims to raise $25 million and uses a revolving approach that can allow capital to support multiple housing projects over time.
Other examples demonstrate the potential of patient and first-loss capital, shared-equity ownership, housing accelerators and community land trusts to address different pieces of the affordability puzzle.
From Housing Challenge to Community Opportunity
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the report is that rural housing affordability cannot be addressed by one organization, one funding program or one type of development.
It requires collaboration across municipalities, developers, non-profits, businesses, investors, entrepreneurs and community organizations.
For organizations focused on economic development, housing increasingly needs to be part of the conversation. Access to safe, secure and affordable housing affects employment, social belonging and wellbeing while strengthening the workforce and local economy.
The opportunity for rural communities is therefore not simply to build more housing, but to build the capital, capacity, partnerships and local innovation ecosystem that allow better housing solutions to emerge.
Launch Kawartha recognizes the need to help shepherd that innovation—serving as guides, connectors and contributors as communities develop solutions that reflect their own needs and opportunities.
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