Filling in the missing middle

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Brightstone Developments to focus on the Missing Middle with a project called OG Urban Towns  in downtown Mississauga.

It is taking time as a result of rising construction costs for the so-called missing middle housing market to grow, which has been defined by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as the lack of available and affordable housing for middle income households to rent or own, but there are signs that is changing.

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Mike Moffatt, founder of an organization called the Missing Middle Initiative (MMI), an Ottawa-based organization whose mandate is to focus on the “issues and solutions needed to help young adults who are striving to join the middle class for the first time,” says there is more activity in the development of alternative type housing units largely due to “regulatory changes to make these things easier to build.”

The “things” he refers to including the construction of triplexes and in some cases fourplexes in urban centres across the country all designed to help young Canadians under the age of 40 get into the market.”

There is, says Moffatt, a need for innovative building practices, faster approvals at the municipal levels and cost reductions strategies such as the use of prefabrication and new ways to approve applications to speed up the process.

The city of Edmonton for example, he says, has put in a system for automating the approval process for a residential permits through the use of artificial intelligence rather than by a human. As a result, what normally would take three months in the past can now take as little as 24 hours.

Still, MMI contends that, “a generation of young adults believe they’ll never be able to enter the middle class, especially those living in metropolitan cities. Many cities risk losing their middle class altogether. The number of young people who think they’ll one day be able to afford a home – one of the traditional barometers of joining the Canadian middle class is at an all-time low.”

But there appears to be some room for optimism due to changes to municipal development charges, something which occurred late last month in Mississauga when the city council there voted to “reduce city residential development charges (DC) by 50 per cent or by 100 per cent for family units (three-bedrooms) in purpose built rental apartments.”

That was certainly good news for Brightstone Developments, which is focusing on the Missing Middle with a project called OG Urban Towns, located in downtown Mississauga.

The company describes the project as a “101-unit stacked townhouse project between single-family homes and an apartment complex on a family-friendly residential street, as a way to keep empty-nesters the neighbourhood while attracting young families and spurring more gentle-density housing.”

According to a release, Mississauga’s has used intensification to successfully transform its downtown into a thriving hub of commerce and entertainment, with an increasingly dense population thanks to the area’s emergence as the GTA’s best multimodal transit node after Toronto’s Union Station — and unlike the uniformity of condos surrounding Union Station, downtown Mississauga’s array of housing is growing it into a complete community.

However, it adds, “downtown Mississauga remains lacking in so-called ‘missing middle’ (or gentle density) housing, which has been touted as integral to developing socio-economically and demographically diverse communities comprising young professionals, families and empty-nesters, to name a few.”

Yoav Bohbot vice president and director of acquisitions with Brightstone, says that while firm pricing for the units has not yet been confirmed, he anticipates pricing to start in the $400,000 range and sell for upwards of $1 million for the largest sized unit.

He points out that these prices are subject to change, but in a good way due to developments such as the reduction of DCs and the fact there is a provincial election currently going and there could be further campaign promises aimed at the Missing Middle.

Both, says Bohbot are proof that from a builder and buyers perspective, coming up with methods to provide more affordable housing is going in the right direction.

“We do not have a launch date, but we are revving up for one and watching the market,” he says.