County of Brant Council received preliminary findings of the municipality’s ongoing Housing Needs Assessment (NHA), during an Administration and Operations committee meeting on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.
Brandon Kortleve, the County’s Manager of Policy Planning, said that the HNA project supports the Official Plan and other housing initiatives, and that the assessment is required for federal funding under the Canada Community-Building Fund.
He said that since Council provided staff with direction to initiate the project back in January, they’ve been working on collecting data from sources like Statistics Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), through local stakeholders and community engagement.
While the EngageBrant survey officially closed on April 22, Kortleve said that at the time of the meeting, over 250 people had responded so far, and that there were several concerns that were already popping up.
“No surprise, there’s some concern about the rising cost of housing and living, I think we all are aware of, and are feeling that,” said Kortleve. “There’s a need for diverse housing types and tenure; there was some data within the housing needs assessment and feedback from the public, speaking to needing more than just, say, single detached housing. We’ve noted a limited supply of rentals, especially larger units for families, there are almost none available in the County.”
He added that from the stakeholder perspective, high fees, lengthy approval times and transportation and transit, are all barriers to development.
With all of that in mind, Kortleve said there were four recurring themes of concerns including affordability, diversity, availability and accessibility, but that staff have already drafted some preliminary directions that support the Official Plan, align with the Strategic Plan, and will hopefully address such issues.
Noting that these directions will continue to be refined as they collect more input, staff are currently suggesting that the County develop incentive programs, support innovative housing models (like ARUs, co-housing, tiny homes and multigenerational homes), expand the rental housing supply, improve infrastructure and transportation planning, update the Official Plan and zoning by-law, support future affordable housing models.
As far as next steps go, Kortleve said that with the public engagement survey officially closed, staff will begin drafting a public-facing version of the data to make it more digestible and easy to understand.
“It’s a lot to digest, so we’ll be working to translate it, so to speak for the public, to make it a bit more bite-sized and understandable so we can get some meaningful feedback from the public on those directions,” he said. “We’ll [also] be looking at hosting an open house, and then we’re aiming to have this final report to council some time in June.”
Councillor Steve Howes then thanked Kortleve for the report, and said that it verified what they’ve all had hunches about in regards to housing.
He also spoke about the distinct shortage of rental units, how tough it appears to be a landlord, the big picture task of incentivizing more rentals, and boarding houses.
Afterward Councillor John Bell then asked if the HNA was something they should have done before the Official Plan, and asked Kortleve if they had really learned anything new.
“I think at this point we haven’t seen anything surprisingly new,” responded Kortleve. “We kind of had a sense of these things, but now we have the data to support it, so to speak, which is fundamental in the policy world to support the directions we go in. So that will give us some more teeth as we move forward.”
Later, Mayor David Bailey wondered if they could facilitate more communication between staff and developers, especially when it comes down to rental units versus condos. He said if they can’t have that communication from the get go, they would be able to better understand what exactly the developer was planning before people got their hopes up.
“If we get notes that say, you know, the first two floors are going to be rental, and for one bedroom it’s $2,350, and for two bedrooms it’s $2,700, then we haven’t fixed anything,” said Bailey.
In the end the councillors voted to receive the report as information, endorse the preliminary findings, and to give staff the directions to begin drafting a public-facing version of the data.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
