Ontario housing bill takes aim at city planning rules to drum up home supply
The Ontario government has laid out a four-year plan to address the province's housing crisis, including a slate of changes to municipal planning rules that Premier Doug Ford's government says are required to get more homes built faster and slow galloping house prices.
But the legislation being tabled by Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Steve Clark at Queen's Park on Wednesday fails to implement many of the 55 recommendations the province's own Housing Affordability Task Force released in February.
Among the missing pieces is the task force's target of building 1.5 million more homes in a decade, nearly doubling the current rate of construction.
The province says it wants time to get municipalities onside with some those proposals such as the elimination of exclusionary zoning that would add density to established city neighbourhoods and it wants better data to base decisions on what to build and where, said a government source.
Instead, it is considering a series of measures that it says will help speed up home construction by expediting development approvals. Municipalities will be required to comply with strict deadlines for plans of subdivision, site plan control reviews and zoning amendments or they will have to gradually refund the developer's application fees
A new housing and community infrastructure accelerator will give municipalities an alternative to minister's zoning orders (MZOs) but will require local councils to consult with the public and pass resolutions that make it clear that it is local levels of government requesting projects such as hospitals and long-term-care homes in their communities. The minister will be able to make those approvals conditional on further consultations or studies.
A government source said the province needs more time to work with municipalities because previously they have refused to implement provincially directed changes such as the community benefits framework that speaks to how developers contribute to the communities in which they are building. Some municipalities have also obstructed directives such as those aimed at building secondary units on single-family lots by placing so many conditions on their construction that they aren't practical.
Many of the task force's recommendations aimed at adding density and controlling development delays are thought to be unpopular with some city councillors and suburban residents in area's where Ford's Progressive Conservatives hope to capture votes in the June election.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) said the task force proposals would not address the province's housing crisis because it laid too much responsibility at the feet of local councils and was too reliant on the private sector - that boosting supply would not be enough to solve the affordability crisis.
The housing bill comes a day after Ontario's finance minister hiked the province's foreign homebuyer tax to 20 per cent from 15 per cent in a move it said would discourage foreign speculators from heating up home prices.
Last week, the government also announced new measures it said would deter developers from raising the price of pre-construction homes after consumers had already signed purchase agreements.
More to come.
Tess Kalinowski is a Toronto-based reporter covering real estate for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @tesskalinowski