Who belongs in Brighton?
I would love to take it for granted that everyone belongs here. I sometimes tell people that, as far as I’m concerned, you’re from here whether you’ve lived here for five generations or five minutes. It’s by choosing to live here that you become one of us.
If only it were that simple. What does it mean to choose, when your choices are constrained?
What does it mean to choose a place that, in one way or another, doesn’t seem to choose you back?
In this post I want to explore one of the core values of our Land Banking project: that we seek to create an inclusive, mixed-income community. Before I begin, I’d like to point out that while I certainly believe that my views are aligned with the vision for this project that council has begun to express and refine, I do not speak on behalf of council. That’s the Mayor’s job, and I have more than enough to say for myself without speaking on behalf of others. My goal in this blog is to examine and explore the issues that council is addressing, and help keep residents informed, but I am not making official statements. If anyone has any concerns about what they see here, please do let me know, I’m happy to chat about it and I always want to be the first to acknowledge when I’m wrong about something.
Who Chooses Brighton
In my day job as a REALTOR® I spend a lot of time thinking about who chooses to live in Brighton. We are known to attract retirees from the GTA who are seeking a slower pace of life. We also attract some younger families who buy here because our housing is more affordable than anywhere closer to where they work, and they make up the difference through a long commute. Every home buyer has a different mixture of motivations, but the hundred reasons that might influence someone’s choice to move all fall behind the wall that is availability and affordability. Of the two groups I mentioned above, the first can generally afford to go where they like, and they like it here, which is wonderful; the second group doesn’t always stay long, because they chose us in the first place purely because we’re more affordable than the places their lives are oriented around.
Either way, I want to ensure that they know that they can belong here. That means looking at the kinds of amenities we have to offer: are their needs able to be met here, or do they commute for their social needs as well as their economic needs? Are there third places here that they can enjoy, and where they can find friendship and leisure?
But both of those groups have chosen this place because they found housing they could afford here. While Brighton’s real estate market is below the provincial average, and therefore relatively affordable by some standards, the true definition of affordable (in which the bottom two-thirds of the population, by income, spends no more than one third of their income on housing) is still less than half the cost of the average house here. Which is to say that while the people who move into town can afford to be here, there are plenty of people (including people who grew up here) who are priced out of our community. It’s hard to feel like you belong in a community that you can’t afford to stay in.
Beyond affordability, feeling welcome in our community also includes cultural considerations. As a member of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Advisory Committee I’ve heard stories of racial and gender discrimination that made me feel physically ill. I’ve seen symbols of inclusion, such as the rainbow steps at Trinity-St Andrew’s United Church and the rainbow crosswalk at ENSS, defaced. But I’ve also seen those symbols patiently and lovingly re-painted. I’ve seen those residents who experienced that discrimination find support from their neighbours. So when potential homebuyers look at our community and ask me if they’ll feel welcome here, sometimes I have to acknowledge that it’s a mixed bag, but that I’m proud of the support for diversity in our community that continues to grow.
Embedding Inclusivity and Accessibility
As we consider developing a neighbourhood, then, we want to ensure that it is inclusive, that everyone can feel welcome there. But how can we do that?
First, that neighbourhood needs to actually be an option for people. That means that the homes that are built there need to be affordable and accessible.
Affordable housing is the raison d’etre of this project, and we want to ensure that there’s a mixture of options in this neighbourhood. Maximizing affordable housing doesn’t mean that we’re going to try to build every single unit as deeply affordable, Rent Geared to Income (RGI) subsidized housing units. To do so might bring some real utility for the families who would live there, but it would a) be so expensive as to limit the scope of the project, and therefore the other utility we could get out of it; and b) create a community where only low-income residents can live. That’s not desirable.
Instead, the goal is to create a mix that includes some market housing, some RGI housing, and some Workforce housing. Between the Northumberland County Housing Corporation (which operates RGI housing across the county), the Northumberland Workforce Housing Initiative (which uses a co-ownership model that helps people who work in Northumberland purchase a home with only a few thousand dollars down), and Habitat for Humanity Northumberland, organizations that make housing more affordable already exist in our area. Partnering with them to build a range of housing options can make for a neighbourhood and community that is truly mixed-income, where anyone can afford to live, everyone can feel welcome, and nobody knows your income level just by your address.
Accessibility is another issue that I continue to raise as we consider this project. As a member of Brighton’s Accessibility Advisory Committee, I have learned a lot about just how excluded our disabled neighbours can feel when we don’t consider their needs. When we build structures and infrastructure that isn’t accessible, we exclude people through thoughtlessness. The principles of Universal Design are not special accommodations for people with disabilities, they are ways of ensuring that all of the places we build are safe and welcoming to everyone.
I know that some local builders are making a special effort to build homes with more accessibility features in mind, but they are still relatively rare. If someone needs a full renovation of a home just to access it, that home becomes much less affordable to them. There are many features of an accessible home, such as wider doorways and larger bathrooms, that can be incorporated into any new building without making much difference on the cost. It is my sincere hope that such things will be incorporated into the neighbourhood we are building as much as possible, if not universally; and from the beginning, not as an afterthought or upgrade.
Third Places
I love the concept of third places, the places we go that aren’t home or work. Sometimes it’s a local institution, like a public library or art gallery; sometimes it’s a park or street; sometimes it’s a favourite shop or restaurant. It’s the existence of third places that really allows a place to become a community.
Think of bedroom communities, places made mostly of houses for people who commute for work and go elsewhere for amenities. You can probably name one or two. They can feel like a ghost town.
On the other end of the spectrum, think about those areas of the downtown core of major cities, places with massive buildings that are nonetheless deserted at night because they’re all office buildings. I still remembering wandering through some of the richest areas of downtown Toronto at night almost twenty years ago, and the eery feeling it gave me, while just a few blocks over the night was full of life.
Now think about places that are just third places: malls, amusement parks, casinos, universities. They can be places of work as well as pleasure, but if they’re concentrated in an area away from housing they aren’t amenities so much as destinations. There’s nothing wrong with a destination, but it doesn’t convey a sense of community if nobody actually lives there.
If we want people to feel like they truly belong in Brighton, we need third places that they can enjoy as part of their neighbourhood. Some of the value of having a mixed-use development (and I’ll write a whole post about that concept) is that it can provide services and third places that all of Brighton can enjoy; but particularly for those people who live in that neighbourhood, walk those streets, and maybe even work there. Having a “complete community” means having all of the elements of a community, including living, working, and those other things that humans do: connect with others, enjoy leisure, learn and grow, etc.
Conclusion
So that’s the vision: in order to build a place where everyone feels welcome, it needs to be a place where anyone can afford to be there, a place designed to universal standards so nobody is kept out by physical or social barriers, and where human social needs can be met through amenities and third places. While we can’t directly address individual discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or gender through our built environment, we can acknowledge the way that systemic discrimination has historically and currently contributed to housing need and commit to building communities without red lines. We can create places where belonging is not a factor of income or wealth or age or ability, and then continue to take steps to support diversity in the community.
What about you? What makes Brighton a place where you feel like you belong? What would make you feel more welcome here? Do you know anyone who chose to leave, or felt they had to leave, because they couldn’t afford to stay or otherwise felt pushed out? Let me know in the comments. We can, and will, do better moving forward.