We'll do our part, but building Oakville's new homes is a partnership.
That’s the message the town will send to the province in the form of a pledge to facilitate the building of 33,000 new Oakville homes over the next decade.
"Oakville recognizes its role as approval of applications, not building housing units," notes the pledge that town councillors eventually approved unanimously after more than three hours of discussion on Monday night.
The promise, which Ward 1 councillor Sean O’Meara described as "almost a pledge of fealty rather than a pledge of let’s build houses," was demanded by the province, with a deadline of March 22.
Last fall, the provincial government set housing targets for various municipalities as part of its goal to build 1.5 million new homes in Ontario over the next decade.
Oakville was told that it is required to build 33,000 of those new homes. And if it didn’t pledge to meet that goal, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing issued a threat to the availability of infrastructure funding.
"The province has made it very clear that if we do not decide to sign on to a pledge, we should not be expecting any infrastructure support from them," Oakville CAO Jane Clohecy told councillors.
But staff are optimistic the town will easily achieve its housing goal.
"The growth that we are looking at is the same growth that we would have been seeing no matter what," said Oakville's planning director Gabe Charles. "It just now comes at us in a more compressed time frame."
More than 33,000 units are planned for Midtown, Palermo and North Oakville, he said, with over 24,000 units currently under review in active development applications.
With many issues – including market forces and infrastructure – outside of Oakville's control, several councillors expressed concerns with promising to see housing built.
But Mayor Rob Burton said the town is only promising to do what it can to meet the goal.
"The pledge, as drafted, only signs us up to do the approvals part," he said. "It carefully stresses that we don’t build ‘em. And for that matter, we can only approve them if (developers) apply for them."
Long-term funding strategy needed
As part of its 50-point pledge, the town identified its efforts to meet the provincial target. Those include improving development approval processes, advancing online tools and working with Halton Region to identify key infrastructure needs.
But under the heading of "What Oakville requires from the province to support this pledge," the town listed 18 requests of the provincial government.
The biggest demand revolves around money.
The pledge asks the province to "work with municipalities to create a new long-term, permanent municipal funding strategy to fund critical growth-related infrastructure projects and, until a new agreement is in place, ensure municipalities are made whole, dollar-for-dollar to eliminate the financial shortfall experienced by municipalities as a result of Bill 23 and 24."
Annual targets and accountability metrics are also necessary to hold provincial ministries, developers and homebuilders accountable for getting houses built, adds the pledge.
It identifies the need for the province to commit to building schools, hospitals, daycare centres and long-term care facilities to support growth.
And finally, it calls on the province to "fully fund, plan and deliver" necessary capital projects in Oakville to allow development in the town’s urban growth areas.
These include QEW interchange improvements at Trafalgar Road and Royal Windsor Drive, a Kerr Street train track underpass and an extension of the GO Train platform and bus loop re-location in Midtown.
A draft version of the pledge can be read online here.
The council-approved pledge included minor wording amendments. The final version is expected to be available on the town’s website by the end of day on March 22.
Interesting takeaways from Oakville’s pledge meeting
How ambitious is Ontario’s 1.5 million homes goal?
Incredibly ambitious.
That is according to Mike Moffatt, a senior director with the Smart Prosperity Institute and an assistant professor at Western University.
In a presentation to town councillors, Moffatt noted that Ontario has never built more than 850,000 homes in any 10-year period and hasn’t even hit 750,000 homes a decade since 1982.
"We need to do something that we haven’t done in 40 or 50 years – and then double it," he said.
"And we need to double our home building at a time when all of our economic conditions are pushing us in the other direction."
How much will growth cost you?
Town and regional staff have indicated that they are still awaiting details that will allow a full financial analysis of the impact of Bill 23. The province has also announced its intent to "make municipalities whole" with regard to costs of the legislation.
But early indications are that significant growth-related costs have been shifted off developers and onto property (or provincial) taxpayers.
Every year over the next decade, Oakville will collect between $19 to $24 million less than it needs to cover growth-related costs for its 33,000 new units, town staff estimate.
Additional shortfalls will ding the Halton Region budget, where staff are estimating the legislation will cost the region between $10,000 and $14,000 per house.
"I don’t know what the magnitude of the dollars are, but they’re huge," noted Ward 6 councillor Tom Adams.
Why aren't shovels in the ground?
Most of the 1.5 million homes the province wants to build have already been approved, according to a recent housing supply inventory undertaken by the experts who manage planning in cities across Ontario.
In a recent statement, the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario (RPCO) says that more than one million units have received municipal approval but have not yet been built.
Developers are not required to meet any set timelines to build after receiving approval for a development plan.
"There is no doubt that Ontario is faced with big housing pressures, and while municipalities will do their part to streamline the development review process, they cannot achieve the 1.5 million homes goal alone," said RPCO chair Thom Hunt. "We all need to work better together."
Oakville planning director Gabe Charles said fewer than 700 Oakville units have been approved but have not yet applied for building permits.