Joseph Coppolino

Municipalities and housing advocates are eagerly awaiting what Premier Doug Ford, Housing Minister Steve Clark and Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy have set aside for housing in Ontario’s 2023 budget.

Housing affordability and supply are top priorities for Ontario’s municipalities. Executive director for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) Brian Rosborough says Ontario’s cities are looking forward to budget day to see how, and if, the impacts of Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, will be addressed.

For one, Bill 23 changed how much municipalities can collect from development charges. These fees, levied against developers, are used to fund infrastructure as more houses are built and cities’ populations grow.

AMO says reduced revenues from development charges will cause an approximately billion-dollar annual shortfall for municipalities.

Though the Ford government stated it is committed to ensuring municipalities are “whole” following the reduction in revenue, details on when, where and how much funding will be made available are sparse.

In some cases, that lack of clarity is causing a reduction in the number of houses being built. In early February, Waterloo’s city council voted to pause construction of a major housing development until they have a better understanding of what to expect from the province.

For Rosborough, the upcoming budget would be a good place to provide that clarity and show how the province intends to fully offset the lost revenue stemming from Bill 23.

“We would like to see the budget straighten this out and explain what is intended,” he said.

Rosborough adds the new provincial budget needs to address the municipalities’ concerns over affordable housing.

A recent report from Scotiabank found Canada lags far behind its OECD colleagues on affordable housing, making the case for a doubling of the number of social housing units from 655,000 to 1.3 million nationally.

Based solely on a per capita basis, that would mean Ontario needs to build some 250,000 additional affordable housing units.

In the 1990s, the Progressive Conservative government under Mike Harris downloaded responsibility for affordable housing onto municipal governments.

Since then, municipalities have used development charges to help subsidize affordable housing initiatives. Without them, the creation of deeply affordable housing has only been further complicated, says Rosborough.

“At the end of the day, it is all about dollars and cents. Additional funding for affordable housing from the provincial government would be extremely helpful.”

That sentiment is echoed by the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF), which is calling on the provincial government to support the construction of 99,000 new co-operative and non-profit housing units.

“The way we do that is we need partnership from all levels of government,” said Courtney Lockhart, associate director of public affairs and policy at CHF.

Supporting deeply affordable housing can be rolled out in any number of ways, said Lockhart — grants, loan programs or even leveraging the province’s existing land assets.

“We know the trends of homelessness and of households in core housing need are trending in the wrong direction right now,” said Lockhart. “So we need to be putting forward some pretty big solutions so we can stop those trends.”

One solution the CHF would like to see the province get on board with is the federal government’s Co-operative Housing Development Program, of which it is a partner. Announced in 2022, the program is providing $500 million in funding and $1 billion in loans to build more co-operative housing over the next 30 years.

The CHF says Ontario needs to leverage that program and expand its reach in the province, ultimately creating more co-operative housing units.

“Co-ops have had a long history of working with all sorts of governments to build a different type of housing supply and creating more options for people,” said Lockhart. “It's not just about creating new programs. It's about partnering with the co-op and non-profit sector and enabling what we're already doing to make sure we're meeting people’s needs faster.”

The province has not given much indication of what to expect from the budget. Bethlenfalvy has held the contents close to his chest, revealing little other than it will be “targeted” and address “uncertain economic times” for Ontarians.

The budget is set to be released on Thursday, March 23.

Municipalities and housing advocates are eagerly awaiting Thursday's budget announcement.

Significant investment needed to stem housing crisis: Ontario municipalities

Read this for free.