Beyond voting to support geared-to-income and supportive housing projects that come with staff recommendation, the most substantial thing I can do is push for permissive zoning that allows infill and missing middle housing as-of-right, without every project having to clear a discretionary variance process first. There are over 700 suppressed households across Lambton County, adult children still living with parents, people sharing housing with roommates they would rather not need. If Sarnia is the community that actually accommodates that demand through permissive infill and missing middle zoning, those households land here, raising Sarnia’s assessment base by roughly 2% without needing to attract a single new resident to the region. Early in the new term I hope to have this zoning in place, so that by the end of the four-year term we can start to measure its actual impact on the suppressed-household gap.
