Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Paul Calandra continued the novelty cheque tour on Friday, rewarding municipalities for meeting or exceeding housing targets with money from the $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund.
On Friday, Belleville was awarded $1.24 million, Welland got $1.72 million, and Whitchurch-Stouffville got $2.6 million. The announcements built on ones made in recent weeks to reward Brantford ($3 million), Brampton ($25.5 million), and Toronto ($114 million) for meeting or exceeding their targets.
While it's mostly all smiles, some municipalities continue to complain about losing out on money due to the program's eligibility criteria.
Municipalities can get a slice of the money if they reach at least 80 per cent of their annual housing targets.
Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, who also chairs the Ontario Big City Mayors Caucus (OBCM), recently said her city is "at risk" of not meeting its 29,000-homes-by-2031 target because it missed out on Building Faster Fund (BFF) money.
Burlington's 2023 target is 2,127 homes. Provincial data shows it's built 584, or 27 per cent of the annual goal.
The fund "counts housing starts through foundations poured, which is outside the municipality’s control,” Meed Ward said in a letter to Calandra, first reported on by Burlington Today. “To date, we have a total of 41,612 units in our permit pipeline, 4,256 of which have been approved. We are doing our part in this way and we are focusing on what we can control.”
The OBCM has been banging this drum for a while. Changing the funding criteria is one of the group's main asks ahead of the 2024 budget.
On top of the foundation issue, OBCM said there's an "issue that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data used to count foundations is often inaccurate and undercounts the construction activities in many of our member municipalities," in a Feb. 12 press release.
The BFF uses a municipality's housing starts, long-term care beds and additional residential units created by renovations or conversions on existing buildings, Bianca Meta, Calandra's press secretary, said in an email to Burlington Today.
"A permit is not a shovel in the ground or a home to live in," she added.
Missing out on the first round of funding doesn't mean the money is gone forever.
All municipalities, including those that don't hit targets, will be able to apply for any leftover funding that will be made available for "housing-enabling infrastructure," Meta added.
Currently, 50 municipalities have housing targets. Nineteen are on pace to exceed their annual targets, while seven are at at least 80 per cent.
The remaining 24 are below the 80 per cent threshold.
The province also counts long-term care beds as homes.
