New Roles Amidst Crisis: Comparing Municipal Affordable Housing Strategies in New Brunswick
Authors: Haley Tobin LeBlanc , Woodhall-Melnik Julia , Pin Laura , Durelle Sarah 
Published: July 2024

Affordable Housing in New Brunswick is desperately needed. New Brunswickers have faced major challenges since the start of the 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, including record-breaking rent hikes, extreme increases to the public housing waitlist, full shelters, and growing encampments. Despite this crisis, the provincial government has rolled out only modest improvements in tenant protections and social housing investments. At the core of the province’s approach to the rental housing crisis is a decidedly neoliberal focus on increasing supply through tax cuts and encouraging housing starts. At the same time, the government of New Brunswick has embarked on municipal reform that gives cities additional capacities, including the ability to mobilize inclusionary zoning by-laws. In response to the housing crisis and against the backdrop of municipal reform, municipal governments across the province have been rolling out new affordable housing strategies. This paper analyzes the most recent strategies in two of New Brunswick’s mid-sized cities: Fredericton, the capital city, and Saint John, a port city and an industrial hub of the province. These strategies have, notably, been developed in a period of dramatic municipal reform and crisis. Attending to the distinct policy mechanisms proposed in these different strategies, we ask four key questions: How is the affordable housing crisis characterized within the municipal strategies? What roles are identified for municipal governments? What solutions are proposed? How do these strategies differ? This comparative analysis will provide a much-needed interrogation of the ways that the two municipal housing strategies have been developed amidst an aggressive neoliberal policymaking campaign in the affordable housing arena on the part of the province. It will also add to the literature a needed focus on the Maritime region, which is often neglected despite facing some of the highest rent increases in the country.
At the same time, the government of New Brunswick has embarked on municipal reform that gives cities additional taxation capacities and the ability to mobilize inclusionary zoning by-laws (GNB, n.d., Community Planning Act, 2017). In response to the housing crisis and against the backdrop of municipal reform, municipal governments across the province have been rolling out new affordable housing strategies. This paper analyzes the most recent strategies in two of New Brunswick’s mid-sized cities: Fredericton, the capital city, and Saint John, a port city and an industrial hub of the province. These strategies have, notably, been developed in a period of dramatic municipal reform and crisis.
Attending to the distinct policy mechanisms proposed in these different strategies, we ask three key questions: How do the municipalities understand the affordable housing crisis? What solutions are proposed? How and why do these strategies differ? This comparative analysis will provide a much-needed interrogation of how these two municipalities are incorporating and/or resisting what has been an aggressive neoliberal policymaking campaign in the affordable housing arena on the part of the province. It will also add to the literature a needed focus on the Maritime region which is often neglected.