It’s part of a country-wide issue and smaller municipalities are no exception according to Tantramar, N.B., Mayor Andrew Black.
“We’re in a housing crisis and it doesn’t matter where you go,” he said. “If you can’t find a house in Sackville, you go to Dorchester and you can’t find a house, you go to Moncton and you can’t find a house.”
For more than a year, the municipality – which includes Sackville, Dorchester and Point du Bute – has had a mayors roundtable on housing.
Black says it’s a small group of local members who are looking into the housing needs and the housing spectrum within the municipality, but he says up until now they’ve been “talking in a little bit of a vacuum.”
The hope is to make the conversation more public and open it to the community with a stakeholders meeting on Friday followed by a public session on Saturday from noon until 4 p.m. at the Municipal Office in Sackville.
“The public session and the stakeholders session will really be focused on what groups within our community are looking at housing and what are their needs and concerns as well as individual people,” said Black. “So we’re going to try to make connections, but it’s also hearing what the public feels are their biggest housing needs and concerns.”
He says the Southeast Regional Service Commission did a housing needs assessment that showed more housing was needed in Tantramar and every community within the southeast.
“I think that we’re behind the ball and particularly when it comes to municipalities. When I got on council nine years ago, we were not talking about housing as far as a municipality was concerned. That is a federal and provincial issue, but more and more there’s been a download to municipalities to look at housing and to work on housing and so where does that fit into Tantramar? That’s what we’ll figure out some of that this weekend,” he said. “We need single family homes, we need apartments, we need spaces for seniors to age in place, we need affordable housing big time and subsidized public housing. We need it all.”
Local realtor Jamie Smith, who has been in the industry for 15 years, says while there’s more inventory than there was two years ago, the market still has significant challenges.
He says for the first 10 years he worked real estate, houses sat on the market for three to six months, buying was fairly simple and the price hovered around $150,000 and $160,000.
“I always compare home ownership to home rental or to rental,” he said. “The average two-bedroom apartment went up roughly 38 per cent. The average home price went up 98 per cent in the same period, so if someone’s looking to purchase in Sackville, if they were looking in 2018, the average price was $158,000 and the average price right now is $327,000.”
Smith says one of the biggest housing market issues he sees is the lack of affordability in the municipality.
“Anyone who’s looking for an affordable option is really just looking at a rental because there are essentially no affordable homes here any longer,” he said.
However, he says rentals are also extremely hard to come by.
“Looking at, I guess, apartment studies from 2024 to 2018, the average kind of vacancy rate when down from four per cent to zero. So out of 601 units in Sackville, there are zero vacant units,” he said.
Overall, Smith says there are a number of barriers to housing that he’s seen firsthand, including barriers to entry for first time homeowners.
“I think the province could to more for affordable housing. There’s a one per cent deed transfer tax for buyers that are buying, so in Sackville that’s an average of $3,200 in purchase,” he said. “That’s every single buyer has to pay that on top of down payment so there are things that I think could easily change that don’t seem to be.”
Black said the data collected this weekend will be complied over the next few months through the mayors roundtable and then they will have a better idea of what steps to take next.
The public session will see an open mic for public input from noon to 1 p.m. followed by presentations on planning, non-profit housing, aging in place, housing options and student housing until 3 p.m.
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