By Madeline Kerr
A housing development that was first proposed in 2019 has finally been approved by Chelsea council, but how much of it will be considered affordable is still up for debate.
During the Oct. 3 council meeting, Chelsea Mayor Pierre Guénard told the crowd that up to 15 per cent of the new units in Phase 2 of the Chelsea Creek development, which will add 72 multi-residential units and 16 semi-detached houses, would be set aside as “affordable” housing.
Municipal communications officer Stéphanie Deforges explained after the meeting that the definition of affordable “remains to be determined officially as part of a future affordable housing policy.”
“Affordable usually means the rental cost is equal or less than 80 per cent of the regular market rental price, or that the housing cost represents less than 30 per cent of an individual’s monthly expenses,” she added.
Multivesco CEO François Juneau, the company behind Phase 2 at Chelsea Creek, said that his company intends to make a percentage of the units affordable by such definitions, but ultimately “it will be the decision of the builder and owner of the multi-residentials. It is not Multivesco’s final decision.”
Deforges told the Low Down that the municipality “will encourage the project’s builders to uphold the developer’s promise,” but did not specify how it would do so. She added that the municipality is waiting to receive funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Housing Accelerator Fund before developing an affordable housing policy that will impact future projects.
The results of a triennial assessment of taxable property values in Chelsea, made public on Oct. 19, show that the average cost of all property types has increased by 46 per cent. The average taxable value of a single-family dwelling in Chelsea is $663,800.
Currently, there are 164 single-family and semi-detached homes in the Chelsea Creek subdivision, which sits behind Isabelle Ménard Pharmacy on Old Chelsea Road.
‘Frustration’ over back and forth requests (Text break)
The process of approving the Chelsea Creek development has involved “back and forth” discussions between the developers, the municipality and residents, according to Juneau.
Three public consultations have been held, during which Multivesco heard from residents and business owners and made modifications to their plans based on feedback, Juneau said.
Key elements of that feedback, according to Juneau, included ensuring accessible housing for seniors, so they can remain in their community; integrating seniors’ units into the design of each building (originally seniors were going to be separated); and ensuring that young families could find housing in the village that’s less expensive than a single-family home.
“We were implored to include multi-residential units in the project, which we agreed to do, based on the idea of being inter-generational,” Juneau explained.
Density was another priority.
“A lot of comments we received were geared toward the environment; people wanted a lot of greenspace,” said Juneau, who added that this resulted in the decision to include underground parking beneath some of the buildings.
“People recognize the need for density,” he said, “but there was a real resistance to offering buildings more than three [stories high].” He said his company eventually gave up on planning taller than three stories because “it seems there was no social acceptance of it.”
Following more delays due to the pandemic and the municipality’s new master plan, which was completed in November 2022, Juneau said his company finally approached the current council with their plans and received yet more feedback and requests.
“This is why, at the presentation [on Oct. 3] you might have seen a certain level of frustration because of all this back and forth…we asked the council to take a position and decide if they want the project or not.”
Juneau said the project could take some time — up to a year just to bring power to the subdivision.
“Hopefully we’ll see some work by the second half of 2024,” he said.
Juneau said that it is too soon for his company to estimate the average rental or sale price of units in the new Chelsea Creek development, and he also could not confirm the size of the units, although plans show that there will be a combination of two and three bedroom, single and multi-story apartments.
“We know there is a housing crisis,” said Juneau, “but it’s taking much longer to work with municipalities nowadays. And this is a project that is 100 per cent compliant [with bylaws], so for projects that are not compliant, it can take even longer.”