The housing crisis in Ontario has deepened considerably over the last couple of years in part due to systemic barriers in the planning system, mostly at the municipal level, that thwart new construction, states Mike Collins-Williams, chief executive officer of the West End Home Builder’s Association (WEHBA).
Homebuilding construction in Hamilton and Burlington, for example, has been unable to keep up with growth, he says, and the trend of not producing nearly enough housing at the municipal level is now beginning to have significant impacts on Ontario’s ability to attract and retain young talent.
“There are far too many people for too few homes. It’s kind of like a cruel game of musical chairs. When the music stops, you’ve got 10 people jumping on one chair and the person with the financial resources wins.
“When you are in a situation where every home goes to a bidding war, that’s going to drive the prices up very quickly.”
The WEHBA represents about 300 companies in land development, residential construction and renovation industries in Hamilton and Burlington. The organization recently presented a seven-page submission on the issue, along with a number of recommendations, to the Housing Affordability Task Force.
In the submission, the organization addresses the reasons for the housing crisis and notes that 80 per cent of Canadians currently and will continue to have their housing needs met through the private market so solutions for housing affordability provincewide should enhance and support those developers
“Despite these ongoing challenges, the need for new housing supply is not widely recognized at the municipal level,” the report states. “As such, most types of new housing projects face significant local opposition.”
The end result of the situation, says Collins-Williams, is that the supply of new housing stock cannot keep up with rising demand as in a lot of cases developers are stymied.
In Burlington, for example, future growth must be addressed through intensification but there has been significant opposition to many economically viable projects, especially in the downtown core, which has made it challenging for homebuilders to file an application and receive local approval, without proceeding through a costly and uncertain Ontario Land Tribunal process.
In response to intensification pressures, and in an effort to combat growth and downtown housing development, Burlington also brought forward an interim control bylaw in 2019 prohibiting most developments within the downtown and by the Burlington GO Station from moving forward over the past two years.
In Hamilton, meanwhile, planning staff and land economists had identified the need for an urban boundary expansion paired with an ambitious intensification rate of 60 per cent to accommodate forecast growth to 2051, but significant opposition to any expansion made it politically unfeasible for locally elected councillors to plan for the appropriate supply of housing.
Instead, council voted to reject an urban boundary expansion, despite modelling that suggested the end result will be a housing shortfall of about 60,000 ground-oriented units.
“Hamilton’s political approach is to ignore the advice of their staff and to ignore the provincial growth plan which requires an extension to their urban boundary to accommodate a portion of that future growth,” says Collins-Williams. “We’re extremely concerned that Hamilton is not going to get the appropriate balance with the more low-rise, family-oriented, ground-oriented family housing and at the same time they’re going to fail to deliver the amount of intensification, so it’s a sort of double-whammy that at the end of the day means not enough housing.”
The WEHBA wants bold action to end exclusionary municipal zoning practices that prohibit “gentle density” and “missing-middle housing” from vast areas of existing residential “single-detached-only” zoning. It wants walk-up apartments, duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes to be part of the solution to the crisis.
“You’re not going to completely change the character of established neighbourhoods by merely attempting to provide additional and more affordable housing options by loosening up some of the restrictions in the building code to allow for semi-detached and stacked townhomes, and still keep it a low-rise neighbourhood.”
While there’s always more that could be done, Collins-Williams says the province seems to be on the right track with its More Homes More Choice housing supply action plan, but municipalities also need to get on board.
“They’ve sort of set the table, now it’s up to the municipalities to implement those plans. But we’re seeing, in a municipal election year, a lot more pushback on implementing Official Plans at the local level.”
The situation is dire, as the population of Ontario is growing dramatically and record numbers of immigrants are coming into the country, says Collins-Williams.
“We have very real challenges ahead of us that require all three levels of government to work together along with the private sector. The politics, especially at the local level specifically, favour the low-growth or the no-growth option and we need fundamental systems changed.
“If we fail to rise to the challenge, I’m very worried about greater friction in society in terms of young people in particular being left behind.”
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