Over the past few weeks, the news has been sensational, shocking, and explosive. When it comes to our Provincial government and their attempts to deal with what is being called a “housing crisis” it seems that everyone has an opinion of how to fix the issue or how to dismantle the efforts being taken to deal with the problems. This is not meant to be a political piece, more an exploration into where we currently are and some solutions to help deal with the crisis at hand.
Let’s start by determining if we are in a housing crisis. In the spring of 2022, a report was released from 9 people in all facets of the Real Estate community identifying the state of housing in Ontario and recommendations on how to address the problems they identified. Here are some of the issues they found:
- Canada has the fewest housing units per resident in all of the G7 countries, with Ontario having 1.5 million fewer rental/owner units alone.
- 70% of land available to build on (in Toronto) is zoned for single and semi-detached homes, with zoning disallowing many neighbourhoods to add accessory or secondary units.
- NIMBY (not in my backyard) issues plague development. Many councillors with a 4-year election cycle do their best to appease local neighbours in slowing or stopping development. Also, planning departments lean heavily on neighbour objections when deciding on applications.
- Red tape. A 2020 study revealed that Ontario is one of the slowest provinces when it comes to approving building plans with approvals taking between 20 – 24 months in many cases.
- Regarding getting building applications approved, only the Slovak Republic is slower in all of the 35 OECD countries than we are here in Canada. The USA and the UK approve building three times faster without compromising quality or safety.
Real Estate is in a crisis state. With immigration levels increasing, along with international students and “province to province” migration, currently, there are just not enough homes to meet demand. The result looks like this:
Year-end home prices in Durham Region.
2012 – $327,300 2019 – $640,300
2015 – $451,700 2020 – $778,000
2017 – 575,000 2021 – 1,033,000
2018 – 587,000 July 2023 $962,000
Some of the solutions that the Task Force came up with were in some areas, strategic and in other ways challenging the systemic flaws in the development process. Changes such as reducing the development charges for each building lot or condominium, fast tracking the development process, reducing the amount of input local residents have when it comes to approvals and allowing for up to 4 units on a residential lot are ways of creating more supply.
The recommendations in the affordability report are a guideline to help with building the 1.5 million homes needed to solve the crisis we currently find ourselves in. In our province we cannot wait for the federal government to come to the rescue, it needs to start municipally with the province paving the way (pun intended) to created legislation, programs and allow developers to get shovels in the ground. The citizens of Ontario, I believe do not want to see people living in churches or on the streets, however reading the news it appears that more focus is directed at what developers stand to gain rather than what we as a community will gain collectively with enough homes to meet the needs of our neighbors.
There is an expression, “to make an omelet you need to break a few eggs,” and with the crisis digging its heels in, we need to get a bit uncomfortable to solve the issues. It begins with a change of attitude and compassion to see that uncomfortable changes will benefit everyone.
Or, if plans get stopped and we continue to head in the direction we are going, it will not be a stretch to see the average home price in Durham Region be the same as the amount of homes needed to be built…. $1.5 million.
If you have questions about Durham Region Real Estate I can be reached at lindsay@buyselllove.ca or 905-743-5555.
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