How do you bring homeowners along for the “Yes in My Backyard” ride and get them to buy in to some of the reforms needed to tackle the housing crisis in the Greater Toronto Area?
That was one of the questions posed to the panel, Outstanding Housing Reforms Needed to Increase Supply, which was part of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario’s Housing Supply Summit 2.0: Progress Report, held virtually recently.
Eric Lombardi, founder of More Neighbours Toronto, says political leaders have failed at making a case for why building more homes should be important to “regular people.”
To existing residents, building new homes in their neighbourhood means additional traffic and congestion.
“I don’t think our leaders have done really well at helping people understand the benefits of having more people being able to live in their neighbourhoods and also more flexibility on what kinds of amenities can exist in that neighbourhood,” Lombardi said. “If you allow, for example, small retail alongside multiplexes…you’re going to have more of the sort of places where you can interact with your neighbours and meet people. You’re going to make more trips without taking your car and other people are going to make more trips without taking their cars.”
People also need to see how it connects to their personal lives, he added.
“People might see housing as their own investment but if you are 50, 60 years old and you have kids that are late teens, early 20s, you are wondering how are they going to get started in life,” Lombardi said. “What does your home equity mean if you have to take out $150,000 from it on a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) to give it to your kids so they can afford a house?
“My biggest gripe at a political level is our politicians are waiting for the population to get on the train, but they are not actually putting the effort to educate people about what it actually means, what these reforms mean for them and not just about it being for other people who want housing.”
Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation with Smart Prosperity Institute, said it’s also important to look at how the existing housing market works for homeowners.
He hears from many seniors that they want to sell their homes and “cash out” but there is nowhere for them to downsize in a neighbourhood they like.
“We should be focusing on how to create more seniors friendly housing in the neighbourhood that seniors want to live in because that would be good for them, but it would also unlock all of those homes…to the next generation,” said Moffatt. “It would help us optimize our infrastructure as well because, in a lot of those neighbourhoods, the average age of the population is in the 70s.
“If we can get more young families into existing neighbourhoods, we can use those schools, we don’t have to build as many new schools, we don’t have to bus the kids as far which solves some of the traffic issues. I think we need to be a little creative and really get out of this mindset that it’s zero sum of existing homeowners versus people who would like to be homeowners.”
Lombardi pointed out historically decisions around land use planning and building are left up to the individual municipalities.
“If we have municipality that is failing to meet the provincial housing needs, that’s a municipality’s problem. But when all of your municipalities are failing to meet provincial housing targets, that is a provincial problem,” he explained. “The reason is that the incentives at the local level towards building more housing simply do not exist.
“The fundamental issue here is we need change and we also need residents of Ontario to accept that change in their neighbourhood is normal and should be accepted at a reasonable rate over time.”
Kris Hornburg, director of development process and performance with Concept 2 Keys (C2K), which is transforming how planning and development applications are reviewed at the City of Toronto, said there are a few things that are key to getting more housing built.
“If I personally think about what developers and what staff need to deliver housing within the city there are three things that jump to mind: predictability, accountability and transparency,” said Hornburg. “Collectively, it’s those improvements that can contribute to advancing development review and, by extension, support quicker timelines and increasing the housing supply in Toronto.”
C2K is currently undergoing procurement for a new e-permitting system.
“One of the things that people are talking about is a lot of countries do that at the state level,” Hornburg said. “They mandate a system that all municipalities have to use so that does a number of things. One, it would actually be a benefit to municipalities but how you implement it is the key.”
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