“Simply increasing private market supply alone will not lead to better housing affordability.”
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The province received some pushback Tuesday from the level of government it has been relying on to build more housing.
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At a session on housing at the Ontario Association of Municipalities conference in Ottawa this week, outgoing AMO president Jamie McGarvey, chair of the association’s housing task force and mayor of Parry Sound, lamented the absence of municipal representation in the task of housing affordability. strength beaten by the province last year, as well as the omission of affordable, community and supportive housing from his mandate.
“These must also be part of the equation. Simply increasing private market supply alone will not lead to better housing affordability,” McGarvey said, to applause from many in the room.
As for the task force’s final report, which the PCs have described as their “roadmap to address the housing crisis”, mcgarvey said so “placed the primary responsibility on municipal governments to solve the problem of supply and affordability through greater speed and lower cost.”
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Bill 109, which was introduced by the province after receiving the working group’s report, has created a major headache in local councils, where staff have struggled to adapt to its changes. These include new, more aggressive legislated deadlines for municipal decisions on site plan control and rezoning requests, which would require application fee refunds if not met as of January.
With council approval, Ottawa city staff have chosen to allow interior urban buildings with six units or fewer to be exempt from site plan control, in part to reduce their workload as they try to meet deadlines. of the new bill 109, but also to support the city. intensification and housing affordability goals.
In a report to council earlier this summer, Ottawa’s planning department warned that “if the city does not quickly and decisively update its current approach to reviewing development applications to meet new deadlines and reimbursements mandated by the province, it would have a colossal impact on revenue and, subsequently, provision of services”
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The report told the council to expect more recommendations, such as the limited exemption from the site plan, as Jan. 1 approaches.
McGarvey told attendees of Tuesday’s session that House Bill 109 gives more responsibility to municipal governments “using a punitive approach” and offers no support or incentives.
“In short, we need more carrots, not sticks,” he said, adding that there are ways the provincial government could streamline its own housing processes.
In an emailed statement, MMinistry of Municipal Affairs and Housing spokesperson Nazaneen Baqizada said, “The delays we are seeing in Ontario are not normal and have real costs being passed on to homebuyers and renters,” offering an example of the help that the province is providing to municipalities in the Bill 109-era. The “optimized development approval fund” is making more than $45 million available “to help large municipalities streamline, digitize and modernize their approach to applications for residential developments,” Baqizada said.
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The focus of Tuesday’s AMO session extended beyond market homes to affordable housing and homelessness. On this front, session panelist and Ottawa Coun. Catherine McKenney argued that underfunding from all three levels of government is the main barrier to substantially reducing the number of Ottawans living homeless or in unaffordable or inadequate housing.
“We have a strategy. We have goals that we are expected to meet as a municipality. But from all levels of government, local, provincial and federal…there is no funding,” McKenney said.
When Minister for Housing and Municipal Affairs Steve Clark took the AMO stage later that day, he emphasized the important role municipalities play in creating new housing and highlighted the actions the province has taken to increase supply in Ontario like upgrading your building. code.
It offered a similar highlight reel on the affordable housing and homelessness front, and called on municipalities to stand with the province and demand that the federal government pay Ontario “its fair share” under the National Housing Strategy, based on the level of basic housing need in the province, which, according to Clark, is the tallest in Canada.
