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Ontario considers revising housing start counts after cities raise concerns · Kvetch & Release

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  Welcome back to AM eight hundred CKLW hope you're all doing well today. Housing
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  Housing, Housing, housing, it's the pretty well one of the number one
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  topics that we talk about, or I talk about whenever I'm here on the
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  station, and it is on the top of minds for renters and first time
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  buyers and sellers and policymakers and elected officials. And we have found out that
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  the government of Ontario is considering revising its tallies of how many homes are built
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  in cities and towns after some complained that undercounting has cost them millions of dollars
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  in provincial funding. As the Ford government attempts to get one and a half
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  million homes built by twenty thirty one, it's assigned annual housing targets to fifty
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  cities and promised extra funding to those who accede or get close to it.
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  But to qualify under the Building Faster Fund, which can be spent on infrastructure
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  related to housing enabling projects, cities need to have hit at least eighty percent
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  of their targets, of which is of housing starts, as calculated by the
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  Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation. But the big city mayors group says there's discrepancies between
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  the CMHC data and their own internal counts, and for four municipalities that we're
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  close to qualifying for funding, it meant losing out on a collective twenty three
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  point three million dollars. Joining me right now to talk about this potential change
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  is Ward nine Councilor Kieren Mackenzie Kieran. Good to have you on the show.
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  This is a really interesting announcement that we're seeing here from the provincial government.
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  What do you think about it? Well, I'm happy to hear that
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  they're entertaining the idea of potentially looking at the metrics that would lead to qualifying
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  for the infrastructure required to support housing housing development in our community. To be
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  honest, that this conversation should have been happening before but or much earlier than
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  this, But here we are today, so let's look look forward. I
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  think it's a it's critical to understand the difference between the way the CMHC determines
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  what a housing start is and what if the municipal or if the provincial government
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  is going to create a program to incentivize municipalities to do everything that they can
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  that's within their span of control to facilitate housing moving forward and housing development moving
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  forward in their communities. Using the CMHC metric isn't fair, and I think
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  that that's becoming increasingly clear in the City of Windsor from a building department perspective
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  and a building permitting perspective, as well as through our planning and our planning
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  and Zoning Planning committee, we have done. We haven't turned down any development.
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  First of all, that's number one. We've everything that's come through for
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  rezoning has proceeded, even sometimes when there's been pretty significant challenges and pushback.
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  The second piece to it, we've invested millions of dollars to improve our capacities
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  in the building department itself, to improve the permit to accelerate the permitting processes.
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  Not easy, These aren't easy decisions, but we've done that work,
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  and unfortunately the program, the way the province has set it up, it's
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  not We're not getting the benefit that other communities are getting for doing that work.
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  So I'm glad the conversation is happening. I hope it proceeds as quickly
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  as possible and we can get some revisions to how we do the counts because
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  I think that we've more than exceeded what we should and need what we need
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  to do to be a good partner in this to the province. So I
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  just want to highlight how confusing these counts could actually be. Our Municipal Affairs
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  and Housing minister acknowledged that a legislative committee earlier this month that at the same
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  time the province was in a dispute with the FEDS over how the FEDS counted
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  affordable homes built in Ontario, he was hearing concerns from cities about how the
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  province was tracking the city's housing starts. Every level of government is sort of
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  pointing at each other here over this situation, and I suppose that that's not
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  surprising considering how big of a problem housing crisis has become and how quickly it
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  happened. It's it's a good point, John. There is some complexity there.
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  But here's where I think it actually is simple. If the if the
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  province is coming it wants municipalities to do everything in their power to address housing
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  stock in their community, then create a metric and a measurement tool that reflects
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  the things that fall within the municipality's span of control. That's building permits,
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  that's zoning changes. Once you get beyond that, it becomes a decision of
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  the private sector. So and they're making decisions on when they're going to build
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  their proceed with their development based on the larger macroeconomic financial environment that we have
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  no control over. So it's it's frankly, it's not fair. It's not
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  a good tool to use as a metric to count whether or not a municipality
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  is going to be eligible or not eligible for for funding to support the goals
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  that the provinces articulated it wants us all to support. So concern that I've
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  raised from the beginning of this discussion or in terms of the targets that the
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  province was setting as to whether or not they're going to provide the appropriate levels
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  of support to help us achieve our goals as well as their goals which are
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  aligned. So this is again there's I get the complexity of it, but
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  it doesn't need to be that complex when the objectives of the province are what
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  they want municipalities to do more to get more and better housing. We're doing
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  that and if you count it fairly, you'll see that. See I wonder
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  if when they announced the one point five million, if they thought it was
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  achievable, if situations changed from when they came up with the figure two when
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  they rolled it out. I only bring this up because we know that they
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  had to include well, they started counting long term care beds as part of
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  homes, and that brought them closer to an annual target towards their goal of
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  the one point five million homes over the ten years. But our housing minister
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  has also previously said he's considering counting student residences and retirement homes, and now
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  the big city mayors are waiting to find out if that's going to happen,
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  if transitional housing is going to count as well. I guess my question would
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  be, if the government keeps trying to find ways to count things that already
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  exist as towards getting to a goal of one point five million homes being built,
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  we're not really adding any new stock. If we're just going to start
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  counting things that are already here, They're already being used. It's not like
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  student residences are empty, or long term or or other places are empty,
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  like retirement homes. It's a fair point. But if we're going to get
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  into this business of trying to establish how much housing is in the community,
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  because the things that you just highlighted, John do represent housing need and pressure
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  that's in the housing universe that communities are being forced to deal with. So
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  if we're looking to create a baseline in terms of how we how we determine
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  what is how much housing capacity do we actually have across the province and are
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  going to develop programs and support programs municipalities based on those numbers, we need
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  a baseline number. So I think it's your point's well taken. But I
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  think if we're starting on this journey, which we kind of are, then
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  let's let's figure out how much capacity is in the system and in the municipalities
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  currently, and then you know, if we want to you know, tweak
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  the program and start looking at different measures that we can do to further incentivize
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  new builds, then I think we also have to have an understanding of what
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  actually what is the real number in terms of what actually exists currently. Well,
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  listen, I'm not against having an accurate account. You can't have a
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  conversation to identify a problem without knowing what the actual facts on the grounds are.
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  I guess my only point was that they're looking to count these as additional
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  new units towards that goal of one point five million. I just I'm having
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  a hard time wrapping my head around that. One. Still, last question
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  that I want to ask you comes down to, of course, one of
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  the most important things, and that is cash, cold hard cash. Do
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  we have enough of it to meet our goals of clearing our affordable housing weight
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  list? How much do we need? What partnerships could there be out there?
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  I mean, what what? What are some of the realities like,
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  I mean, it's not cheap to build. Those are the big fundamental questions.
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  The answer is no. And how much do we need? That's a
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  really good question. Uh, there's a you know, we have a list
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  that's that's that's into the several thousands, and it's grown appreciably since I even
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  started on council. Uh just uh, just over six years ago. So
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  we're not making we're not making progress. We're going in the wrong direction.
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  Obviously, there needs to be new funding and new models and new new new
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  ways of interpreting or or figuring out how to how to bring bring new units
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  in, particularly in the affordable space. Online. Here's what I do know
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  and what I believe firmly we cannot and in terms of what like the strict
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  definition of affordable housing, which includes people who are you know, need brant
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  supports and whatnot to be in to be to be housed, the private sector
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  cannot and cannot be relied upon, will not participate. There's no path in
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  my view, for the private sector to be uh involved in affordable housing.
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  And uh so this is the pressure is entirely on the public sector to address
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  those needs. The other the only way to knock down that that list,
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  the people who are on those waiting lists is for the economy to generally improve
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  unless people have the need to be in affordable housing, that's you know,
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  and then they could they could start looking into the private sector. But when
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  you hear private developers saying I'm going to build affordable units, they're not doing
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  that. They're going to build they're looking to build a unit that at a
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  in the sort of the private marketplace, would be affordable to some in the
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  middle of the income spectrum, or maybe on the middle to a low end
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  of it, but people who are in high need and in poverty. The
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  idea of a private developer building affordable housing that fills that need not happening won't
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  happen, needs to be incentivized. That of course means more money. It's
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  a complex issue though sometimes looking at it from the fifty thousand point view or
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  on the ground level, you can get different perspectives that always appreciate your perspectives.
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  Ward nine councilor Kieren McKenzie, appreciate you having me on, John,
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  and you're dre and you're consistent addressing this really important topic. Thank you,
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  Thank you very much. We'll be back right after this