Housing plans hold promise

There’s no denying that the housing crisis well and truly has the attention of political leaders.

For the federal Liberals, it’s been all housing, all the time. On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled Canada’s Housing Plan, tying a bow on several weeks of announcements on the housing front. It all marks the “most comprehensive and ambitious housing plan ever seen in Canada,” he boasted.

Elements of Friday’s announcement include a plan to build affordable housing on public lands, tax incentives to encourage the construction of rental housing and student housing and lowinterest loans to encourage the addition of secondary suites.

Ottawa’s goal is to see at least two million additional new homes by 2031, on top of the 1.87 million that were already forecast to be built.

It’s an ambitious target. As federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser told the Star, “I’m not interested in making marginal improvements to a very serious problem.”

Of course, there’s nothing like sobering poll numbers to focus a government on a national crisis. The Conservatives, consistently running ahead of the Liberals, have gone to town on cost-of-living issues.

Whatever the motivation to act, the important thing is that the federal government is now fully engaged in a substantive way. There is, after all, no one solution to the housing crisis. Instead, it demands a mix of policy changes and targeted investments to boost the diversity of housing stock. And it takes political willpower to enact vital land planning reforms to replace restrictive zoning rules that have ensured city neighbourhoods remain the preserve of single-family homes.

The federal strategy, underscored in Friday’s document, has elements of all to boost the construction of rental units, investment in municipal infrastructure new home construction, affordable housing, and funding made conditional on more accommodating zoning rules to allow for additional density, such as fourplexes.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government last week announced its latest initiative in its homebuilding effort, this one an attack on red tape to meet Premier Doug Ford’s goal of building at least 1.5 million homes by 2031.

While the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act contains several useful measures, the question is whether it can achieve the dramatic results Ford would wish.

The sweeping omnibus bill, tabled Wednesday by Housing Minister Paul Calandra, seems to do more snipping than slashing afoot, which is not inherently a bad thing, but renders the exercise something less than the bold stroke the government’s hyperbole would suggest.

The bill would streamline government permit processes, make it easier for universities to build student dorms, improve transparency around controversial ministerial zoning orders and eliminate parking requirements for higher density housing developments near transit stations to lower costs.

It would also enshrine the so-called “use it or lose it” provision that allows cities to withdraw permits for stalled housing developments.

It includes amendments to the building code to promote buildings made of mass-timber — a compressed wood made for strength and weight bearing — which makes building faster at lower cost than reinforced concrete. The bill would further streamline approvals for garden suites, laneway housing and basement apartments and end the right of third-party appeal of developments to the Ontario Land Tribunal.

All of which will help, and certainly please municipalities, which have been assigned housing targets to help meet the premier’s goal. But critics saw the bill as too timid. Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie characterized it as “a random grab-bag of small-ball measures the Ford government could have done years ago.” NDP Leader Marit Stiles called it a weak bill from a government “lacking in the bold vision and leadership.”

They are not wrong. It has been two years, after all, since the Ontario Housing Task Force said that “decades of dysfunction in the system and needless bureaucracy have made it too difficult for housing approvals to keep up with the needs of Ontarians.”

“The time for action is now,” the task force said. “Resolving a crisis requires intense focus and a clear goal.”

And that lack of focus — as much as red tape — has hindered resolution of this crisis.

But such criticism is not limited to the Ontario government. All governments have been slow to recognize the steadily worsening housing shortage and its debilitating impact on all segments of society with renters, from new immigrants to students and young professionals, facing soaring rents and aspiring homeowners shut out of an overpriced market while the unhoused are literally left on the streets.

As Trudeau observed on Friday, “younger generations are worried that they won’t have a life that looks like how they grew up — like their parents and grandparents had. That’s not fair.”

The housing announcements hold the promise to fix that, though not quickly. But it will demand political force and focus to drive this smorgasbord of promises to implementation. That will be the test for Ford and Trudeau, whether their high-profile housing strategies are meant simply to boost their political fortunes or truly solve the crisis.

There is no one solution to the housing crisis. Instead, it demands a mix of policy changes and targeted investments to boost the diversity of housing stock