Housing affordability measures coming ‘very soon’: Ontario premier
A package of housing affordability measures that could have a swift impact on the hot Torontoarea housing market will be introduced “very soon,” Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said Monday.
Wynne wouldn’t provide further details on those measures, but she acknowledged the need for immediate relief at a time when the average price of a detached house in Toronto has surpassed the $1.5-million mark.
“There is a need for some action that will have an impact fairly quickly, but we also know it’s a complex market and we have to be judicious in the way we bring forward initiatives,” she told The Canadian Press from Illinois, where she met with Governor Bruce Rauner to discuss trade.
“We’ll be bringing forward a package of initiatives very soon …” said Wynne.
At Queen’s Park, Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown called for longer-term
measures to address housing supply shortage, accusing the government of standing by as prices have reached “a crisis point.”
Brown said the government needs to reduce the “red tape and regulatory burden” on building new houses, and called for a panel of experts to develop housing market measures, as well as to address housing demand by collecting data on speculative vacancies.
Josh Gordon, a Simon Fraser
University associate professor who is studying the Toronto-area housing market, said one thing the government could do is target the demand.
“Fundamentally, the government needs to change expectations and, in my view, the main thing that would change expectations and dramatically curtail this kind of panicked demand is something like a foreign buyers’ tax that is stiff and targeted at the Toronto market,” Gordon said.