Oakville News readers have recently been treated to an informative back and forth between Halton Hills councillor Jane Fogal and Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing MPP Steve Clark on the issue of how our province will accommodate its population growth.
It’s an incredibly important issue that will shape the future of our community and our province. And we’re heartened by the readership stats that tell us that the Oakville News community cares deeply about this issue.
Ontario has about 15 million residents today and will grow by five million by 2050. Successive provincial governments have been trying to limit the impact that growth will have on our farmland, greenspace and natural environment.
Planning rules have been put in place to build housing that uses less land per person, cuts down on paved roads and adds density in the right places. The aim, in other words, is to limit the sprawl that has bloated much of the GTA over the last 50 years.
Until recently, voters have consistently elected governments committed to preserving greenspace and reducing car-dependent sprawl. At the ballot box we’ve appeared to endorse a plan for more compact growth and increased intensification.
But the truth is, single-family homes in lower density neighbourhoods are still the easiest and most profitable for developers to build and sell. It is what many people want to buy. Even just the promise of that type of development can reward speculators with soaring land values.
We have a mismatch between market demand – which would bring more single-family housing at the cost of paving over farmland and greenspace – and what the population has voted for until now. In other words, between individual home buyers’ desires and the collective desires of Ontario society.
This kind of mismatch has happened before. The Toronto condominium market was driven not by the desire of buyers to become cliff-dwellers but by the absence of other kinds of housing stock giving affordable access to an urban lifestyle for millenials.
If we require higher density construction and transit-friendly intensification, eventually that is what developers will build and what people will buy. But should they have to? This is what the Ford government is challenging.
So far, developers have not been meeting market demand by building on the shovel-ready approved land that is available, because it’s not zoned for what they can sell most profitably. The result has been a supply shortage that has contributed to an “affordability crisis” and to buyer frustration used to pressure government to release more land for “market-based” housing stock. Those opposed to this counter that if supply of new single family homes is restricted, those wanting it will drive up the price of resale homes. As we can’t afford to keep paving over greenspace, single family homes will, as elsewhere in the world, become more and more a luxury, with a higher percentage of the population choosing less sprawl-inducing housing forms.
The Ford government has instead responded to this by requiring municipalities to open up land on a 30-year planning basis. They argue this will increase housing supply and improve affordability.
But the problem is that builders will develop the most profitable land first – the single-family, greenfield sprawl that covers farmland with concrete, requires new roads and highways, and leaves buyers dependent on their cars.
This may satisfy short-term market demand, and undoubtedly will improve developers' profits. But the idea was nowhere in Ford’s 2018 election platform, and flies directly in the face of what voters appear to have asked for over the last two decades.
Worst of all, it would have a permanent impact on Ontario’s future.
Once municipalities have designated land for development – something the Ford government wants done before the next provincial election – it would be impossible to reverse, even if a new government wanting to return to the longstanding policy of fighting sprawl were elected.
We believe the consequences of these decisions are too far-reaching, consequential and irreversible to be made without the input of the voters.
The Ford government should delay changes and make this issue part of its platform in the next election. A vote will allow the public a chance to understand the implications and weigh in on the idea.
Anything less is undemocratic.
And if the province won’t back off, we think municipal councils should resist the timing with every tool at their disposal and give the people of Ontario a chance to have their say.
If you agree with us, contact MPP Stephen Crawford or MPP Effie J. Triantafilopoulos and your mayor and councillors.
