Belleville’s incentive programs offered more in subsidies for downtown store facelifts ($25k) than to create affordable housing ($10k)

The $50,000 2021 “Affordable Housing” Community Improvement Plan (CIP) was created in response to Belleville Council’s 2019 Housing Summit to help address the City’s housing crisis by incentivizing rental housing development through tax and fee rebates.

A Community Improvement Plan (CIP) is an optional municipal planning tool that enables a municipality to provide subsidies to business owners, land owners and tenants to incentivize development.

The goal of the updated CIP was to create 1,000 new housing units in the City – including 544 new affordable rental units by 2025 with an estimated $13 million investment over 10 years for an average cost per new housing unit created of $24,568.53. The Plan had 17 programs, including:

• 3 for affordable rental units
• 5 for new rental units
• 4 for downtown businesses to improve their storefronts
• 5 for the rehabilitation of industrial lands

However, Belleville Council only ever greenlit 1 of the 3 affordable housing programs and only allocated $1.35 million in funding out of the $13 million that was promised before the housing programs were defunded by 2022 Belleville Council in the 2023 Operating Budget in an effort to reduce the increase in property taxes for homeowners.

With only Program 3 opened and less than half the promised incentive available ($10,068.18 per unit instead of $24,568.53), 88 apartment rental units were approved for CIP funding – 81 of which would be held “affordable” (no more than Average Market Rent) for a period of 10 years – between the first intake in Spring 2021 and September 1, 2022. This cost the City was $886,000 in reduced property tax revenues via Tax Increment Equivalent Rebates, which works out to $10,068.18 per unit over 10 years.

Belleville did not report the results of the CIP programs until after Open Council filed an FOI request.

In March 2024 it was reported that the Community Improvement Plan Reserve Fund would be underfunded by $1.281 million by December 31, 2024.