Ontario legislation to cut housing red tape is ‘bad planning’: Hamilton mayor

The city says a provincial plan to cut red tape to expedite residential construction will instead gum up development approvals and download costs onto local taxpayers.

Proposed changes under Bill 109 will also undermine local decision-making and spur additional expensive disputes before the Ontario Land Tribunal, city officials say.

This is bad planning. This is bad policy coming foward," Mayor Fred Eisenberger said Friday.

Council held a special meeting to formally relay concerns to the province by its Monday deadline as the bill make its way through the legislature after its introduction last week.

But at least one city politician expects the More Homes For Everyone plan is a foregone conclusion.

I'm a little bit in awe of what is happening before us," Coun. Brad Clark said. Unfortunately, I don't think our comments will be heeded."

Bill 109 pitches a suite of legislative changes designed to speed up municipal planning approvals to create more housing units amid Ontario's affordability crisis.

For instance, municipalities would have to refund application fees by varying degrees depending on how late files are processed beyond legislated timelines.

Based on this year's activity forecast and previous processing times, the policy would result in a $5-million hit to the tax levy and require at least a doubling of personnel to maintain operations, staff warned.

There's also concern the punitive" measure will undermine collaborative efforts between staff and developers to refine proposals.

Staff may rush to make a pre-emptive kind of decision in order to avoid having to refund fees, which is really not useful for anyone, and it really just pushes everything to the litigation stage so much faster," planner Tiffany Singh said.

Staff also noted some factors - such as comments from external agencies or delayed responses from developers - are beyond their control and can delay processing past deadline.

But the West End Home Builders' Association supports measures in Bill 109 to expedite the process amid a growing housing crisis in southern Ontario, CEO Mike Collins-Williams told The Spectator.

There's no silver bullet and this plan does not go far enough, but it's a start."

And it's disappointing" that city officials, who hold significant responsibility" for a slow and bureaucratic" approvals process would oppose initial steps to help address the housing crisis," he said.

But city planning staff and politicians argued Bill 109 offered little to address the affordability crunch.

Reliance on supply is a misguided view," Eisenberger said, pointing to dramatically low interest rates" as a major factor in skyrocketing property values.

Singh said Bill 109 has very limited" tools to address deeply affordable units and really is just targeting market-rate housing."

The Ontario government has told municipalities to update their official plans by July to reflect growth targets. In Hamilton's case, the population is expected to grow to 820,000 by 2051.

Bill 109 also gives the minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs the ability to refer official plans and elements of the municipal land-use blueprints to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) for judgment.

Last week, Minister Steve Clark told the legislature he'd consider that for Hamilton's official plan, which the city revised to reflect a frozen urban boundary, a strategy he has assailed more than once.

On Friday, Eisenberger - who backed a firm urban boundary to prevent sprawl into farmland - called the OLT the province's favourite engine ... to circumvent" local planning and consultation.

Collins-Williams disagreed, calling it a third-party independent tribunal that takes the politics out of planning" and makes decisions based on data, evidence and planning policy."

In an emailed response to The Spectator's request for comment, the ministry also noted Bill 109 would allow the minister to pause" the 120-day review period for official plans.

This would give us more time to assess these official plans and work together to ensure we are planning for the growth we all know is happening. This is vital to help more Ontarians realize the dream of home ownership - not just existing wealthy residents."

Through More Homes for Everyone, the province plans to commit $19 million over three years to bolster the OLT and tackle its backlog of cases, the statement added.

In November, council opted to channel that growth within the existing urban boundary through infill and denser housing types rather than support a staff-recommended boundary expansion into rural areas, in part, to satisfy the province's market-based policy.

Anti-sprawl campaigners, Stop Sprawl HamOnt, argued expanding the urban footprint would pave over prime agricultural land and increase the city's infrastructure costs when enough homes could be situated in the existing built-up area to handle long-term growth.

But developers with property on rural lands eyed for expansion have contended the frozen boundary will constrain the supply of single-family homes the market demands and drive homebuyers elsewhere.

Teviah Moro is a reporter at The Spectator. tmoro@thespec.com