Two days after being re-elected, Toronto Mayor John Tory announced he will be creating a new development and growth division at the city to streamline the approvals process and get more houses built faster and, if necessary, he will use Strong Mayors powers to do it.
“I wanted my first announcement as re-elected mayor to focus on getting more housing built faster,” said Tory. “Work is now fully underway to create this development and growth division to hurry up housing…I’ve indicated to city staff that I want this division up and running as quickly as possible and that I will be using the Strong Mayors powers to implement it. I expect this new model will be up and running as a result of all that by early 2023.”
In September, the Government of Ontario passed the Strong Mayors, Building Homes Act, providing the mayors of Toronto and Ottawa with new executive powers within their municipalities. Tory said he will “not hesitate” to use those powers to get the department up and running. It will be a fundamental change to city hall and how the government is operated, the mayor added.
“It is all to ensure that we cut through what is all to often been an approval quagmire for people that are seeking to build housing and get new homes approved as quickly as possible,” said Tory. “Senior staff in the city are working quickly to create this division which will be a substantial re-organization of existing staff so that they are focused even more keenly on the process of approval and on the delivery of housing much faster.”
He added, “This plan, which represents a fundamental rethink of our bureaucracy, will be a major contributor to ensuring development applications move as efficiently as possible through our system without sacrificing necessary diligence.”
He also committed to delivering on the mandate Toronto voters have given him on building housing.
“I assure you that the steps necessary to implement the changes needed to facilitate more mid-rise on busy streets and to permit more housing options in neighbourhoods across the city will be brought forward very early in the life of the new council,” said Tory.
“This is an issue on which I am laser focused and on which we will be acting with as much urgency as possible.”
City staff have made efforts to streamline approval processes in the past few years and the work of the new development and growth division will build on that, Tory noted.
“We simply have to do better as a city so that we can get built the housing that we need including more affordable housing,” he said.
“We are in a housing crisis in Canada and that is being felt acutely here in the City of Toronto. We cannot shirk our responsibility as a city to get housing built and we most certainly have to avoid making the situation worse with costly delays. This problem wasn’t created overnight and won’t be solved overnight but this division I’m confident will be a significant step forward to address it.”
The mayor said he will provide further updates on the division and his five-point housing plan in the weeks and months ahead.
“The development and growth division and the rest of the five-point plan builds on this progress by looking critically on where we can streamline and modernize processes at City Hall and how we incentivize our homebuilding partners to increase our housing supply and thus drive affordability,” said Tory.
“I want to be clear to everyone: none of this means rubber stamping or rushing bad applications, neither does it mean that our planning staff is not doing their job. What has happened is that a process has evolved around our professional staff which ends up stopping them or inhibiting them from moving housing projects forward efficiently. The design and effective functioning of this new division will unblock that process and in fact improve the process within which our staff do their important work. It should make their jobs easier for them to carry out. It will empower planners who work in the city to get housing built faster while still making sure we are building complete communities.”
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