Townships not immune to provincial push to build more homes
RURAL MUNICIPALI TIES LIKE WOOLWICH AND Wellesley are struggling to cope with the provincial government’s demand to build more homes.
Many are also noticing a growing gulf between the number of permits they issue and construction starts.
Deanne Friess, Woolwich Township’s director of development services, said she has noticed a “delay” in starts among their target of 886 homes to be built in the next three years.
And Tim van Hinte, her counterpart in Wellesley, said he would like to see extra provincial funding “to assist with building the required infrastructure to support housing growth.”
Robin Jones, chair of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA), said projects are stalling due to rising costs as well as the challenge of increasing water supply and sewage capacities.
It mirrors complaints from several leaders of Ontario’s cities, who are calling for Premier Doug Ford to set their annual targets to permits granted instead of housing starts.
Many municipalities, such as Mississauga, are falling short of their start quotas and now face being penalized by not receiving any money this year from the province’s $1.2 billion Building Faster Fund to help cover infrastructure costs.
Woolwich and Wellesley are not among the 29 large municipalities included in the fund, but are included in other legislation aimed at tackling the burgeoning housing crisis.
ROMA chair Jones, who is also the mayor of Westport, a village of 800 people around 50 km north of Kingston, said: “With the significant growth happening in rural Ontario, many communities are challenged with having enough capacity for the building that the province wants.”
She noted that the pressure to build more new homes had put a particular stress on rural areas because so many urban Ontarians had moved there during and after the pandemic.
“The demand for a small municipality is extreme for housing, especially in terms of single-family homes and affordable housing,” she added.
But Jones said local authorities have limited powers to ensure those homes are actually built.
“We don’t control the building,” she explained. “We really don’t, unless it’s social housing. We don’t do a lot of building. We have processes in place.
“Once developers have got their permits in place, there is little that the municipality can do to get the houses actually built.
“So when the provincial government is counting housing starts, that’s one thing that’s very different versus building permits.
“They need to look at what is possible for municipalities.”
Jones said there were many issues causing projects to stall.
“It’s not that developers have decided to sit on their hands,” she explained.
“Their issue is that interest rates have gone
up exponentially since 2020 and so borrowing costs have increased.
“The cost of their supplies have also increased, sometimes they’ve gone up by 50 to 60 per cent. So the whole process has become more expensive.”
Jones also said the provision of infrastructure was causing the lag between permits and building starts.
“Often the biggest challenge is that the capacity that we have for water and sewer is not endless.
“So when a developer goes in, the pipes that go in obviously have to meet the standard and the needs of the municipality.
“So that’s part of the cost of building the home, but we run the systems and the systems are not limitless.”
In August ROMA issued a report that outlined what Jones describes as the “systemic barriers to
growth” that rural Ontario faces and she hopes the provincial government will respond.
“The crisis is happening in urban areas,” she said. “But we have the same challenges.
“I know that many of the urban areas have been making the suggestion [of setting targets for building permits and not starts].
“So I’m optimistic that the government’s going to listen to the arguments on the ground, what’s happening in places where they’ve got targets.”
In Woolwich, Friess said there is a push to build more homes, but admitted the township’s powers are limited.
“We plan to introduce some initiatives to increase housing and intensification,” she explained.
“The growth target would be approximately five per cent higher than past averages.
“We have noticed some delay in housing starts in new subdivisions due to market conditions.
“We all have a role to play in responding to the housing crisis.”
Van Hinte said Wellesley had not set a housing target but that they are in the planning stages of some bigger projects after previously averaging about 25 housing units per year.
“We have two medium-sized developments in the Village of Wellesley that are currently in the planning stages, known as the Doering Street condominium townhouse project with 50 units and the Strohvest subdivision with 166 units,” he explained.
Speaking about a desire for more provincial funding, he said: “Our understanding is that a portion of the overall Building Faster funding will be allocated to single- and lower-tier municipalities that have not been assigned a housing target, including small, rural and northern communities, in order to address their unique needs.
“We would certainly welcome funding to assist with building the required infrastructure to support housing growth, like upgrades to wastewater capacity in the Village of Wellesley.”