Builders slam Ford government for 'no coherent' housing plan
Housing "cannot be a political football" and Premier Doug Ford has fumbled the file so badly that home ownership will be even more unaffordable for Ontarians, says a scathing public letter from the Building Industry and Land Development Association.
Members of the association — to whom Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra repeatedly apologized for the Greenbelt fiasco at a recent meeting — are accusing the provincial government of having "abandoned its position of leadership and its electoral mandate to build housing … in favour of political expediency."
"We really are concerned that there doesn't seem to be a coherent plan to deliver housing," Dave Wilkes, president and CEO of the association, told the Star in an interview
"We believe all stakeholders that are involved in delivering housing — the provincial government, municipal governments, unions, ourselves — need to sit down and say we have a challenge. We have a generational challenge to deliver housing. We need to understand what that plan looks like and what each of our roles is," added Wilkes.
"We need to work with this minister. We want to work with this premier, and we need to work with this premier," he also said. However, "there needs to be consistency and certainty. We're just concerned that we're not seeing (that)."
Recent decisions by the province to not expand urban boundaries in areas like Ottawa, Kitchener, Halton and Hamilton — lands not related to the Greenbelt — have "overcorrected on the housing file to secure its political future at the expense of all future home buyers in the province,” Wilkes wrote in the letter on behalf of his association, more commonly known as BILD, which represents 1,200 builders and developers in Greater Toronto
The letter says the decision to reverse the changes to open up the urban lands "limits lands for future housing, meaning there will be a shortfall of 242,000 new housing units by 2051. The decision to indemnify the government against financial damages caused by this reversal, has developers questioning whether it is prudent to invest capital into new projects in Ontario.
“Since early fall, there have been a series of government decisions that are effectively undermining the ability of the industry to add housing supply for future growth. The province is committing us all to unaffordable housing for generations to come.”
BILD also points to recent provincial approval given to Toronto for an official plan that ignores a number of requests to allow for "potentially tens of thousands of new housing units … with some employment space retention if those sites were made mixed use. As the province ignored those requests, these units will now not be built."
These decisions, "coupled with the announcement to review its commitment to reduce taxes on new housing through proposed changes to development charges has created unmanageable uncertainty for the housing industry," Wilkes said.
“In the space of a few short weeks, in the middle of the most significant housing crisis this region has faced, this government has made decisions that effectively cancelled nearly 300,000 housing units" in the Toronto, Hamilton and the Greater Golden Horseshoe, Wilkes wrote.
“Even more critical, these decisions are undermining the very investors that are needed to finance new housing developments and called into question the viability of projects that would have added much needed housing supply," he said.
Last week, Calandra told developers he was "sorry" several times for the $8.28-billion Greenbelt scandal that has rocked the housing sector, blaming a "failing of government."
Speaking at BILD's annual general meeting, Calandra said "the speed at which we moved — and the inability of us to bring people with us — is what has caused the challenges over the last number of months and we will not repeat those mistakes going forward."
In September, the government reversed plans to swap 7,400 acres of the protected Greenbelt lands after the auditor general and the integrity commissioner found certain developers were "favoured."
"It has been a challenging time for us — and I think it has been an even more challenging time for many of you. I am sincerely sorry for the difficulties we have caused you and the industry over the last number of months," Calandra said.
BILD says the government needs to meet with developers and other stakeholders to come up with a plan to meet the urgent housing needs in Greater Toronto as well as across the province.
However, Advocacy group Environmental Defence said its version of a good plan for housing would be very different than what developers want.
"It would mean slamming the brakes on inefficient low-density greenfield sprawl and rezoning to focus construction capacity on land-efficient housing within existing neighbourhoods," said Phil Pothen, land use and land development program manager with the environmental advocacy group.