BILD takes aim at province’s decision to approve Toronto plan amendment
Toronto’s home builders are irked by the provincial government’s decision to fast-track approval of an amendment to the city’s official plan that will, they say, lead to the construction of fewer new housing units.
The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) took aim at the province’s decision to approve the City of Toronto Official Plan Amendment (OPA) 591 on December 13.
OPA 591 proposed new and updated policies related to employment, and employment conversions, including mixed use and land designated for homes. BILD said in its current form the amendment includes 24 employment conversions that could accommodate as many as 8,000 new housing units.
Missed in the discussion of the amendment, it says, were 45 requests to the province through consultation to adjust the city’s OPA scope for potentially tens of thousands of new housing units.
As the province ignored those requests, these units will now not be built, said BILD. In addition, based on BILD mapping, none of the city’s employment conversions are near transit, meaning the resulting housing will not be transit supportive.
The association calls the move, “yet another example of how the province has abandoned its position of leadership and its electoral mandate to build housing in the Greater Toronto Area in favour of political expediency.”
“In order to distance itself from its own past actions, the provincial government has overcorrected on the housing file to secure its political future at the expense of all future home buyers in the province,” said BILD president and CEO Dave Wilkes. “Since early fall there has 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 says the move is the latest in a growing list of decisions made by the province that are undermining the provision of housing and employment space supply in Ontario. The decision in October to reverse expansions to urban boundaries in the Greater Golden Horseshoe 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. The decision not to expand OPA 591 shelves another potential tens of thousands of housing units.
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.
“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 Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area,” Wilkes said. “Even more critical, these decisions are undermining the very investors that are needed to finance new housing developments and call into question the viability of projects that that would have added much needed housing supply. Cities and developers around the world compete for this investment and the actions of this government are threatening this lifeblood of new housing.”
The association is calling on the province to meet with all stakeholders to define an achievable and sustainable plan to build new housing.