As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Ontario is headed to the polls on February 27. This blog is part of our series outlining what we see as some of the key environmental issues voters should keep in mind as they talk to candidates and when they cast their ballots.
Sprawl is causing our housing shortage, we need a new plan.
Housing is a key issue in Ontario, but our housing numbers are falling and, unless the province changes its approach to housing development, we won’t reach the 1.5 million homes needed by 2031.
What’s causing Ontario’s housing shortage?
Ontario has all the tools it needs to house a fast-growing population, even with high interest rates. However, our focus on sprawl development has made it hard for housing construction to meet demand. Prioritizing sprawl restricts multi-family housing in lowrise neighborhoods, limits apartments to small highrise areas, and requires most family-sized homes to be built inefficiently outside urban areas.
Urban sprawl also increases car-dependency, threatens Ontario’s Greenbelt, destroys rare wetlands and sensitive wildlife habitat, and consumes what remains of the province’s good farmland.
We need leaders who will turn the way we plan housing on its head—shifting from car-dependent sprawl to building family-friendly apartments on existing residential streets. Ontario needs a legislature with the guts to overhaul outdated zoning, unfair fees, building codes, and tax rules quickly, and from the top-down.
Why not just cut taxes, fees, and “red-tape” for all new housing?
Ontario’s housing crisis emerged even though construction workers and equipment were running at full tilt. Unlike fast-growing states in the United States, who ruthlessly exploit undocumented and underpaid migrant construction labour, Ontario can only increase home building by getting builders to make better use of the labour, equipment and materials that we already have. That means ensuring that the mid-rise infill housing development that produces family housing most efficiently is also the easier, more cost-effective, and less risky option for builders than the less-efficient alternatives.
In order to meet housing targets, we would like to see the next government:
- Lower land costs for labour-efficient buildings in all of Ontario’s existing lowrise neighbourhoods—starting with blanket permission for six-storey apartment buildings on every existing residential major street and avenue and four-storey apartment buildings on every suburban, city, and small town residential lot throughout Ontario.
- Cut construction costs for mid-rise housing by allowing use of simple wood frame construction, removing residential parking minimums, ending “step-back” requirements, and legalizing single staircase designs for buildings up to six storeys and permitting mass timber construction for buildings up to eight storeys.
- Stop the wasting of construction capacity, by reversing all designations of rural land for sprawl development since 2022. Requiring that any development on land designated before that house at least 100 people per hectare and expand the Greenbelt to the rest of southern Ontario’s farmland and natural areas permanently.
- Cancel planned subsidies for inefficient sprawl, starting with the destructive $10B Highway 413.
- Fund deeply affordable public and non-market housing, especially when market construction is stalled.
- Unlock existing towns and suburbs for families without cars and new homes that don’t waste land and materials on parking by immediately funding more bus service and quickly approving, funding, and installing bus rapid transit lanes on existing arterials and collectors.
Our next provincial government must stand up for Ontarians and their housing needs. There’s only one path to solving the housing shortage, saving farms, forests and wetlands, and fixing car-dependent suburbs—and we need leaders who will pursue it.
