Speed, density, dollars and land.
Those are the top four priorities to address the housing crisis in the City of Toronto, said Mayor Olivia Chow during a mayor’s panel at the Housing Summit 3.0: Driving Solutions to the Crisis, hosted virtually by the Residential Construction Council of Ontario on Oct. 12.
“Getting the land, finding the money to build, providing more density and making it a lot faster,” said Chow.
“In terms of speed, we’re trying to fast track our process, our planning…make it a one stop shop.
“Right now, the city has three departments doing different things. We are consolidating them into one place.”
City of Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie agreed speed is a critical factor.
“That’s staffing up our building and inspection departments to try and make sure we can get things moving faster through the system,” he said. “That also includes making sure we are embracing technology to make things much easier for people.”
He also said councils “need to get out of the way.”
“What I mean by that is there are ways we can set up policies, and we’re doing this, where we give more delegated authority to our planning staff to be able to get things done or we’re changing our zoning and our official plans to make things as-of-right in many different categories so developers don’t have to come to council,” Guthrie said. “Then these things can move faster through the system.”
Brownfield rehabilitation is also priority for him.
“A lot of our cities have these brownfield lands and they happen to be right in the middle of many core areas of our cities, so it’s near a transit line or near amenities that people can immediately be a part of a community if it was just built up,” said Guthrie. “If we can get them cleaned up there is a win for everybody.”
As mayor of the Town of Wilmot, a rural municipality in the Region of Waterloo, Natasha Salonen said the housing stock is made up of mainly single detached homes but more variety is needed.
“Part of that is through encouraging secondary units in existing homes,” said Salonen. “We’re starting to see a lot of developers come in and purchase homes and put up six-plexes or four-plexes and also working with developers who own our greenfield space in our regional official plan and how do we get them to shovel ready and actually building homes.”
When asked what other levels of government need to do to support municipalities, the three mayors agreed funding is of utmost importance.
“We rely a lot on infrastructure funding, especially as rural municipalities with lots of bridges that connect our communities and roadways and of course those pipes that are under the ground to bring all of our water and wastewater,” said Salonen. “Working with them on funding to ensure that when developers are ready to build we have the wastewater capacity, we have those pipes all ready and accessible and also on the other side…we actually have staff in the building able to help push along and speed up all of these processes.”
Chow and Guthrie also said they are waiting on the province to “make them whole,” a commitment the provincial government made to municipalities if they can’t fund housing infrastructure and services due to Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act.
Toronto is asking the provincial and federal governments to provide land and financial support so they can accelerate building infrastructure, Chow said.
“If they want to take some of our highways and transit costs, go for it,” she stated. “But the thing is we can’t grow unless we have that kind of infrastructure in place.”
The provincial government also needs to make necessary changes and then leave municipalities alone, Guthrie added.
“There have been so many changes that have come from the provincial government and it is bogging down our staff from being focused on planning approvals for actual developments and housing,” he said. “I’m not suggesting that maybe more doesn’t need to be done I’m saying, ‘OK whatever it is, do it’ and please let us amend our processes and regulations here to align with what they want to do. Then give us some breathing room because it’s just been constant, constant, constant changes.”
He agreed with Chow municipalities need to know how the province is going to make them whole.
“Most municipalities are getting ready to do their budgets and every single one of us has consistently told them, ‘Our budgets are coming up please how are you making us whole? You promised you would. How is it going to happen?’ And none of us have answers,” Guthrie stated. “To leave it to the last minute like this…it causes a lot of friction in the relationship where we don’t want friction because we all need to be focused on building homes.
“Municipalities are looking for certainty so they can get going on implementing.”
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