Housing
Most homes you can own are single-family. Most homes you can rent are owned by private landlords. The city needs more homes, more kinds of homes, and more ways to own and rent them, preferably through infill that enriches existing neighbourhoods.
Where I stand
Saint John’s housing market produces two products and almost nothing in between. 40% of homes are single-detached and just under half (49%) are ground-oriented (single, semi, or row house). 55% of households own, 45% rent. The average household is 2.1 people, but the dominant home is built for four. There is almost no condo apartment market and very few co-ops. If you want to own, you are mostly choosing between single-family houses built for bigger families than actually live here. If you want to rent, you are mostly choosing between units owned by private landlords. Both products fail in their own way.
The ownership gap is one of fit. Half of the city’s stock is built around the assumption of a four-person household, but the average household is half that size. Anyone who wants to own has to take a house even if a smaller, easier-to-maintain unit would suit better. There is almost no condo apartment supply for downsizers or first-time buyers. The market doesn’t give buyers the choice. Owners end up paying for more home than they wanted: higher property tax, higher heating bills, more maintenance than they signed up for, and no easy way to downsize without leaving the city. People without a downsizing option are stuck. New entrants have to look outwards, for longer commutes, right at the time when parents need every extra minute.
We need to support sustainable ownership options in Saint John. One size doesn’t fit all. Single-family detached is not the solution for every housing need. Condo apartments give downsizers and first-time buyers an entry point without a house and a yard to maintain. Row town houses fit smaller households without the burden of more home than they need. Right-sized units for the now typically smaller households. Form factor provides the energy efficiency: shared walls, smaller volume, less heat loss. Bills stay manageable, and smaller size keeps maintenance low. Ownership becomes a path rather than a trap. The market has not been delivering this range. The city’s job is to make it easier. And every empty nester who finally has a place to downsize to frees up a single-family home for a family that needs one. Aging in place needs both the right home to move into and a city walkable enough to age in.
The rental gap is one of price and quality. Rent in Saint John rose over 40% in the last decade and almost 12% in 2022 alone. Vacancy is hard to measure, and is estimated between 2% and 4%. Behind those numbers are two structural causes the city alone cannot fix but should name. The first is the provincial property tax: rentals pay both the provincial and local rate. That gap flows straight through to rent, every month. The second is underinvestment: when demand is this tight, landlords have no market reason to upgrade, so renters pay more for drafty apartments with windows that cannot be opened, sagging floors and uninsulated walls. 27% of renter households spend more than 30% of their income on housing, more than double the share for owners.
While we saw a record number of housing starts, the housing stock kept aging. Some buildings are lost to fire or condemnation each year. Population growth is also working against a healthy rental market.
One pattern worth bringing back is the mixed-use street: commercial on the ground floor, homes above. Saint John already has streets like this in Uptown and the North End. They are walkable, they fill ground-floor vacancies that are otherwise being converted to housing-only, and they give small operators a foothold near the people who actually live there. New infill should default to this shape wherever the corridor supports it, not single-use apartment blocks set back from the road.
Another alarming issue is that the city is subsidizing private developers in exchange for promises of “affordable” that expire after twenty years. If we are going to put taxpayer money into housing, the building should serve the taxpayers, permanently. The model that already does this exists locally. The Unified Saint John Housing Co-operative was formed in 2016 from the merger of eight smaller co-ops, took on a ninth in 2018. They operate on a non-profit basis: no shareholder dividend extracted from rent. At 294 units city wide, they started unlocking efficiencies of scale. USJ is the right partner to scale up housing affordable in the long term.
What I will push for on council
- Permit and fee structures that favour density over sprawl.
- Direct public housing money to non-profit operators (the Unified Saint John Housing Co-op already runs 294 units citywide) or a municipal housing corporation, building units that stay affordable forever, instead of subsidizing private developers for time-limited “affordability”.
- Buy back affordable rentals before they are flipped and repriced out of reach.
- Expand the Vacant to Vibrant program to take over neglected buildings before they are condemned.
- Widen the ownership ladder: condo apartments, housing co-ops, duplexes, fourplexes, walk-ups, townhouses. Real options between the single-family house and renting from a private landlord.
- Support sustainable home ownership: energy-efficient builds, retrofits, and lot-splitting options that let owners right-size without leaving the city.
- Default new infill to mixed-use where the corridor supports it: commercial on the ground floor, homes above.
- Scrutinize every surplus parkland or greenfield disposal before approval.
- Push the province on the provincial property tax gap that lands in every renter’s rent.
- Continue zoning reform (ZoneSJ) and remove permit barriers that punish density on serviced land.