Housing affordability and supply have become an enormous crisis for Parliament and city hall alike, but more vacant federal government office buildings bring with them opportunity, too.
Ottawa has long been marked by its urban sprawl crawling to the outskirts, with bus arteries herding public servants into the downtown core and other urban areas like Tunney’s Pasture.
The result has led to a reputation as a boring, government town made worse by its location between Toronto and Montreal, the cultural centres of anglo and francophone Canada.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic’s emergence of work from home hit, turning downtown Ottawa into something of a commercial desert. Alongside that global health crisis was one of the worst housing affordability crises in the western world, with Canada maintaining the second-highest price-to-income ratio out of all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Both housing affordability and supply have become an enormous crisis for Parliament and city hall alike, but more vacant office buildings bring with them opportunity, too.
Unlike other housing-hungry cities in Canada, Ottawa has an ample supply of former office buildings owned by the federal government. Currently, 35 properties in the Canada Land Bank are either open for feedback, accepting submissions or under review.
The land bank was announced last summer by the federal government as part of the federal government’s new housing strategy. All the buildings chosen by the land bank were selected due to their suitability for housing development.
The land bank was to deliver the properties through a long-term lease model to ensure affordability and retention of public land in public hands.
The land bank holds the biggest promise for Ottawa, where the federal government has one of its largest portfolios of buildings, meaning those lands can improve the density of the downtown core and surrounding neighbourhoods.
For example, three of the Ottawa properties are near Hurdman Station and could accommodate almost 5,000 new housing units, the federal government says.
The properties include: Hurdman North, a parcel west of Riverside Drive and south of Highway 417, with potential for 4,000 units; 315 Terminal Ave., which could house 300 units; and 1460 Riverside Dr., which could accommodate up to 500 units.
Jason Burggraaf, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Homebuilders Association, told the Ottawa Citizen that more people would need to live in the downtown core to revitalize it, attracting more amenities like shops and grocery stores.
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“The more people we can have living downtown in the core, the more viable and more life it’ll see,” Burggraaf said.
It’s a familiar push for experts and politicians to push for housing supply, however it arrives. For Lesley Cabott, president of the Canadian Institute of Planners, anything that increases housing supply means lower costs. Cabott points to Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s statement that 3.5 million new homes are needed by 2030 to meet demand.
For some housing advocates, though, there are worries that the Canada Land Bank could facilitate more of the same problems around development that spiked homelessness and the affordability crisis, which is only set to get worse from the tariff war created by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, is skeptical about rushing federal buildings into the hands of private developers.
It raises a larger and historical question about the federal government’s offloading of public housing in the 1990s and the increasing pursuit of private-public partnerships (P3s) within government since then.
“If it’s a public asset, like federal government land, government buildings, those sorts of things, it needs to be kept in the hands of the public,” Burkholder Harris said. “P3s seem like a great idea, but they don’t offer that long-term, permanent affordability.”
Burkholder Harris advocates for “non-market operators” to own and manage the converted buildings to ensure affordability over decades. Without it, she warns, long-term affordability is at risk.
Currently, the federal government has committed to ensuring that 20 per cent of the housing units that are developed on federal lands are affordable. Jeff Leiper, the Ottawa councillor for Kitchissippi ward, has written to the city seeking to double the commitment for affordable units.
It’s a balance that the federal government is trying to strike between achieving revenue from assets if it leases them to private developers and reduced revenue from leasing to non-profit organizations.
“The good news is that, regardless of whether it is affordable housing or market-based housing, it is more housing,” Leiper said.
That said, for Leiper, an area like Tunney’s Pasture, which has five buildings within the land bank, his preference is for more affordable units. He points to the reduced parking ratios at Tunney’s Pasture that have been designated for new buildings in the area.
It adds another complexity to densification and revitalization through conversion or other multi-unit buildings. How will Ottawa diversify its transportation option, particularly for a core and other urban-adjacent neighbourhoods that lack the option for building new roads?
“The good news is that it’s chicken and egg,” Leiper said. “Higher population densities lead to more transit because the ridership base is there to financially underwrite the provisional service.”
Bike lanes are also expected to be prioritized in heavily diversified areas. However, recent bills passed by the Ontario government add another complexity as every new bike lane needs provincial approval.
Other challenges remain for the city’s ambition of diversification, too.
So far, city council has not chosen to give financial incentives, like waving developer fees, to private developers who convert office buildings into residential units, although it has happened on a small scale in the ByWard Market. It’s not likely to expand, either, as the city depends on development fees alongside the political hot potato of property taxes for its revenue.
The waiving of fees is an enticing option for developers. Multiple people interviewed for this story said that converting office buildings could be just as expensive as building new ones. Sometimes it could be more economical to simply demolish an old building than to convert it.
Burggraaf is one of those voices. Office conversions are much more complex than simply handing a lease to a developer and expecting a building to be developed. It differs site-by-site, he said, and just because it is a conversion doesn’t exempt it from the same permits and approvals from the city a new build requires.
Then there are the capital costs and engineering challenges of converting old office buildings. Some federal buildings, like the Sir Charles Tupper Building on Riverside Drive, are in areas without the amenities of buildings located in urban neighbourhoods.
“Why were they passed over the first time around?” Burggraaf said, pointing to the Tupper as an example.
Burggraaf said there are also concerns around remediation and construction. Does a building have asbestos or other contaminants? Do its floor plans make sense for residential use? Does a building have enough natural light?
However, there is an important environmental argument for saving the carbon cost of construction with office conversion.
Conversions can also inject more commercial and social activity into neighbourhoods. Judy Lincoln, Westboro Village Business Improvement Area executive director, believes more density gives local businesses more opportunities and foot traffic, which is essential for exploring neighbourhoods.
For Burkholder Harris, office conversions, if done with affordability and vulnerable people in mind instead of market value, can help end homelessness.
“Ending homelessness, is possible, and it absolutely starts with housing,” she said.
“Office conversions, I think, are going to and are a part of that. It’s just we need to be really thoughtful about how we do that and when and with which providers. But I do think it’s one of many pieces to that, to that puzzle, to solving the housing crisis.”
With files from Postmedia News
Editor’s note: This story is part of a Postmedia series called How Canada Wins.
