Ontario mayors were given 400 million reasons to cheer at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference on Tuesday, as Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma announced a new program to give cities $400 million to build new roads and bridges.
It's the latest funding program the province hopes will spur home building amid lagging housing starts under pressure from high interest rates and restrictive zoning policies that are putting the Tories' hopes of achieving 1.5 million new homes by 2031 an increasingly fleeting goal.
“We are ensuring that, even though high interest rates and global uncertainty have impacted housing starts, we are laying the groundwork for a long-term building boom as economic circumstances improve,” Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra said in a news release.
Since the 1.5 million homes goal was set in 2022, the province has built 242,647 units, according to the briefing binder presented to Associate Housing Minister Vijay Thanigasalam, obtained by The Trillium through the freedom-of-information system.
The province, however, counts long-term care beds, student residences, and retirement homes toward the total.
In 2023, the province built nearly 90,000 homes (not including long-term care beds, student residences, and retirement homes) — well below the yearly average needed to meet the goal — and private sector forecasts don't anticipate annual housing starts topping 100,000 until after the 2031 deadline.
Cities can apply to the new "Housing-Enabling Core Servicing" program starting Aug. 21. The province set aside $120 million of the $400 million total for smaller rural and northern municipalities.
The new funding is meant to complement other programs created by the Ford government in recent years.
Last year, the province announced the $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund to give cities on track to meet or exceed their annual housing targets extra money to build infrastructure accommodating for growth.
The province also has a $1 billion-plus program to help build water infrastructure, like treatment plants and wastewater management sites, to serve the growing population.
Also on Tuesday, Calandra announced the Ford government finally finished combining the two documents that guide land use planning across the province.
The new Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) will replace both its older iteration and the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The former of the two previously separate policies applied to the whole province, while the latter was specifically to the Golden Horseshoe region, where most of the population lives.
The province first announced the two documents would become one in 2023. It went through several rounds of consultations resulting in its new law of the land that'll take effect in two months.
One of the most significant changes is eliminating the need for cities to do a "municipal comprehensive review" before trying to expand settlement boundaries.
Previously, cities could only expand boundaries every few years through the specific review process. Now, cities can expand their boundaries any time, so long as certain criteria — like the new land having adequate infrastructure and servicing to meet the new population's needs — are met.
