Huron County staff continue to work on a five-year review of the county's official plan.
Planner Monica Walker-Bolton said one of the major focuses throughout the update is the need for affordable housing in the county. It makes the distinction between affordable and attainable housing by defining attainable housing as market housing that's affordable for someone making a living wage, which was recently set by the Perth-Huron United Way at $17.55 an hour.
Walker-Bolton said the update encourages a range of different types of housing for renters, potential homeowners and condo-type developments.
"Within that, there's the different types of housing, which would be single detached residential, semi-detached, townhouses, and apartments, so we're trying to focus on flexibility for developers to be able to build new housing that meets the needs in the community," she said.
Walker-Bolton said the draft will be on the county website for people to view and provide comments.
"We need to be looking at encouraging development of other forms of housing that would include more dense and more mixed forms of housing, so even policies that would allow mixed residential and commercial within our towns and villages are incorporated into this update," she said.
The province will be reviewing the update over the next three or four months and they expect to have a final update ready early in the new year.
