Affordable Housing

Services: Encouraging Affordable Housing Developments

As dwelling costs rise across Canada, municipalities are relied upon to provide affordable housing solutions. Affordable housing covers a wide range of subsidized public, private rental, co-ops, and non-profit housing. Municipalities control the location and design of affordable housing stock as part of their planning and zoning responsibilities.

Overcoming the cost challenges of affordable housing requires integrating economic incentives with development. The ideal places to build affordable housing units are typically in centralized urban areas, where the cost of land is at a premium. Where opportunities to situate affordable housing in urban areas exist, they tend to be adjacent to highways or industrialized areas disconnected from schools, community centers, parks, reliable transit, and workplaces.

Applications and Solutions: Optimizing Wellness in Affordable Housing

The ongoing maintenance, operations, and oversight costs associated with community programs remains challenging for municipalities. Automating maintenance schedules using software to coordinate residents and volunteers can ensure long-term operations and reduce the need for full-time staff to manage programs.

Development incentives include subsidizing affordable housing units with ground-floor retail and community spaces or requiring affordable housing units make up a percentage of higher-end development. The benefit is that management and operational costs are captured in mixed-use buildings, subsidizing ancillary fees, while affording low-income tenants wellness benefits of affluent communities.

Considerations – capital costs vs reduced operating costs and improved outcomes

Technologies

CBPR (Community-based participatory research) – Partnership approach to community engagement based on collaborative input for decision-making. This advances traditional town hall techniques but is resource-intensive and slow.

Open Data – Sharing municipal data on community metrics can encourage community engagement and development of targeted solutions.

APIs for App Developers – APIs can enable private sector developers build applications that are compatible with secure municipal systems to enable connected user interfaces.

Smart technologies – Mobile-based scheduling apps can help reduce service delivery costs. People who have difficulty managing their life and require additional car can use smartphone and publicly available touchscreen monitors to connect them with municipal, community, and health services.

Cloud-Based Data Platforms - Some service providers offer internet-based services for accessing and displaying sensor output. These services allow their municipal customers to access the data in a single online space.

Crowdfunding Development Bonds – Financial bonds that connect instruments together can accelerate the cost challenges to affordable housing development.

Smart gardening – Gardening with technology can reduce the overhead costs of managing community gardens and green roofs through automated irrigation systems, smart plant monitors, gardening apps and robotic lawn mowers and weeders.

Modular Construction - Modular home design and construction can also reduce construction costs through prefabricated foundation, wall assemblies, and insulation systems. This approach can integrate renewable energy into building facades using solar tiles, for example, improving the energy efficiency of homes and thus, affordability.

Managing Liability Issues

Privacy

Issues.

⚠️ Successful community initiatives are based on interpersonal relationships built on trust between members. Introducing data mining technologies can undermine project goals and participation. Technology should be used to determine evidence-based investments and measure and track outcomes, not to invade personal and public spaces or to encourage monetization of user data.

Managing issues.

✅ Capture data impersonally. Record feedback and comments in an anonymous way that cannot be attributed to individuals.

✅ Choose the technology appropriate to the task. Low-tech solutions in some contexts may be preferable to high-tech ones, consider the non-technical benefits of an activity and whether the technology is enhancing the outcomes and protecting privacy or if it is obstructing the development of trust and community.

✅ Data-fuzzing. Employ data-fuzzing techniques to preserve privacy. For example, do not include start and end points in route data so that a particular route cannot be traced to an individual. Similarly, fuzzing data of sensitive areas provides an additional layer of security for personal information.

✅ De-identify at the source. Many camera technologies allow for faces to be blurred at collection.

✅ De-identify as soon as possible. If personal information absolutely must be collected, it should be stripped away as soon as possible.

✅ Limit data collection to only that which is needed. Collection strategies such as bicycle numbers and heat maps rather than individual-specific routes avoid engaging more serious privacy concerns.

✅ Ensure that partners or contractors follow collection restrictions. When purchasing data from private companies, ensure that they are upholding their own privacy obligations under relevant legislation.

✅ Follow good privacy practices.

Security

Issues.

⚠️ Security issues emerge from the hardware and software components of technology. The location of hardware in urban infrastructure may be vulnerable to vandalism, interference, or theft. Software issues will require security review to ensure that they are well-programmed and not prone to backdoor malware and privacy breaches.

Managing issues.

✅ In the affordable housing context, security issues can transform the objectives of wellness outcomes – for better or for worse. Security issues are contextualized in a community and can be mitigated by community engagement and feedback.

✅ Many of the same solutions to privacy issues will address security issues: e.g., de-identify at source if possible, or as soon as possible if otherwise. Where personal information is collected, it should be held in a secure location.

✅ Access should be limited to those with a need to use the information.

✅ Follow good security practices.

Operations

Issues.

⚠️ Staff costs for delivery of ongoing community programs, projects and developments are often limited. Building community-based nonprofit, charity, and volunteer capacity is often critical for ongoing success, since private partners are unlikely to manage services post-construction. However, neglecting to appropriately allocate responsibility can expose both private and public partners to liabilities.

Managing issues.

✅ Forming early partnerships with key stakeholders through contractual agreements allows liabilities to be distributed prior to their occurrence. To facilitate agreement, this should include detailing duties and relevant sunset clauses for when liabilities end. Understanding the lifecycle of projects and assessing risks early can shield municipalities from inheriting failed programs, plans and projects.