Bruce County offering homeowners $50,000 to build affordable rental units

In an effort to help clear a few people from their more than 1,000-person waiting list for community housing, Bruce County is willing to pay current home and landowners to add affordable rental units to their properties.

"The County has recently launched an Affordable Residential Unit program. This is a pilot program. So we're offering it this year in order to try to increase the opportunity for rental housing here in the county," said Claire Dodds, Bruce County's commissioner of Community Development.

Bruce County is offering to pay homeowners as much as $50,000 to add a basement apartment, granny suite, or tiny home to their property.

There are plenty of strings attached, though. To make it truly affordable, rent can only be as high as $1040 per month for a one-bedroom apartment, or $1464 per month for a two-bedroom apartment to start with. However, a rise at a fair rate over time would be allowed.

Successful projects would also need to sign a 15-year agreement with the County to keep rent affordable.

A Walkerton home, seen on Sept. 27, 2024. (Scott Miller/CTV News London)

"We believe that it's important to help homeowners provide affordable residential units. So this is one way that the County can help provide that financial investment, but also secure that it's going to provide long term stable rents in community," said Dodds.

While there is as much as $50,000 available per project, Bruce County has only set aside $100,000 for this pilot project. So, the real goal isn't adding hundreds of affordable rental units. It's about finding out if this kind of approach works to add affordable housing to the county.

"As we are working with the successful applicants, there's also learning for county staff, and that learning has the potential to influence how we would run potentially a future program, as well as what learnings can we use and apply through our development review process, both through the county and our member municipalities," said Dodds.

Dodds said they don't have a specific number of Affordable Residential Units, or ARUs, that they'd like to add through the program.

However, each project that's approved should help either pull someone off of the county's growing community housing waitlist, or prevent someone from having to join that waitlist.

You can learn more about Bruce County's Affordable Rental Unit pilot project by visiting their website.