Changes to new-home data called ‘misleading’

Student, retirement units to be counted toward Ontario goal

Scrambling to improve slow progress on new housing starts, Premier Doug Ford’s government will include student and retirement units toward its goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2031.

But opposition parties are crying foul, saying those types of accommodation don’t make the grade because Ontarians struggling to buy homes in a supply and affordability crisis can’t raise a family in them.

“What are they going to count next … jail cells?” New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles said Tuesday as she criticized Ford for fighting fourplexes as a way to improve the housing supply.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra — who on Wednesday will announce new measures to “cut red tape and help municipalities build” — pushed back at critics.

“Obviously, student housing is very important,” he said. “Every time we build new housing, or a college or university campus builds new housing, that is more housing that is available in the community. I don’t think that’s a very difficult concept to follow.”

In a recent letter to acting Mississauga Mayor Joe Horneck, Calandra said the province is figuring out how to get statistics on student and retirement housing starts.

“We will continue to explore data sources for tracking the numbers of other institutional types of housing such as student residences and retirement homes for future program years and commit to engaging municipalities on the same,” he wrote March 27.

To meet its 1.5-million target, the province needs to build an average of 150,000 new homes annually.

But the last two years, the actual numbers were well below that, with 109,111 in 2023 and 80,300 in 2022. Soaring interest rates and higher building costs driven by inflation were factors.

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, a former three-term mayor of Mississauga, accused the government of “trying to prop up their numbers with dorms and retirement units because they’re not meeting their (housing) targets.”

“It’s misleading, and it’s just a shell game,” she told a news conference at Queen’s Park.

“You can’t even have a microwave in a dorm room. My goodness, that is not a home,” Stiles said in an exchange with Calandra in the legislature’s daily question period.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner mused whether the government might go further.

“At this point, the government is going to start counting tents,” he quipped.