Looking for affordable accommodations in York Region?

Don’t make plans for the next 10 years or so.

The waiting list for rent-geared-to-income units is about 9,500 families long, meaning some of those families will wait a decade or more for subsidized housing, depending on the size of unit they seek and their desired location, community and health services commissioner Adelina Urbanski said.

Part of the reason the waiting list has grown by leaps and bounds is because there’s just no supply out there, Ms Urbanski said, adding thing worsened when the economic downturn hit.

And while the region would like to build more affordable housing to meet the growing need, funding — or lack thereof — limits how much help it can provide at any given time.

For that reason, most, if not all, buildings built by Housing York in recent memory incorporate a mix of market-rent suites and rent-geared-to-income units. The advantage is the pricier apartments and homes help make the subsidized housing possible.