double the provincial average for rental units
From my personal experience one issue that keeps on cropping up in town council and Planning Advisory Committee meetings is the amount of rentals in Wolfville and the constant push to create more.
The town has municipal planning guidelines and land use bylaws that are the basis for decisionmaking re: developments. However these serve as guidelines only and can be altered by way of development agreements by the town. Things such as the amount of frontage an apartment might need can be lowered for example.
My experience has been that some developments get passed with features that do not meet the guidelines while others don't. Of course this oversimplifies things but the seeming inconsistency of these is what prompts me to think an overall "plan for development" in Wolfville is what is necessary so that any developments outside of the guidelines can be measured against what the overall plan is for the town.
Among other issues it begs a question the townspeople need to answer
Do we need more rental units being developed in the town?
If so what is the best way to achieve this?
if not then why are we allowing the "guidelines" to be altered to accomodate further development?
In response to "Do we need more rental units being developed in the town?"
I'd like to hear direct from Acadia but apparently they have significant dorm vacancies. The question for them would be is it the result of decreasing enrollments i.e. less students or is it the result of a greater percentage wanting to live off-campus as opposed to on-campus or some combination thereof. I will work on gathering those stats.
Looking at Statistics Canada information from the last two census periods, there has been a 4.6 per cent decline in Wolfville's population.
Furthermore the number of rented dwellings outnumber owned dwellings with a whopping 52 per cent of dwellings rented while 48 per cent are owned. That's approximately double the provincial average for Nova Scotia. To be fair we also note that Wolfville is a "university" town so tried some comparisons with towns like Sackville, N.B. and also Antigonish where less than 40 per cent of the dwellings are rentals.
The source for these stats can be found at:
http://www12.statcan.ca/english/profil01/Details/
details1fam.cfm?SEARCH=BEGINS&PSGC=12&SGC=1207024&A=&LANG=
E&Province=12&PlaceName=wolfville&CSDNAME=Wolfville&CMA=
&SEARCH=BEGINS&DataType=1&TypeNameE=Town&ID=2577
In light of this information my question is do we have a shortage or lack of rentals available for people? What is the occupancy rate of apartments off campus? By creating more apartments are we simply creating movement among rental units or actually meeting increased demnand. etc. etc.
Let's get some discussion going on this one. I'd love to hear from developers and landlords on what their experience has been.
Glenn
posted by David A. Daniels @ 1:00 p.m.
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