Under the guise of making housing more affordable, the Ontario government has announced it will soon enact radical new legislation aimed at speeding up the permitting process for new housing,
The proposed legislation will do little, if anything, to address runaway housing prices. The key beneficiaries will be developers.
The new legislation will dismantle existing neighbourhoods, remove local controls on development, dismantle environmental and heritage protection, burden existing homeowners with higher property taxes to pay for new services for new homeowners and effectively silence local voices on planning matters.
And most municipalities already have solid plans to meet existing provincial housing targets
Some of the more controversial recommendations include removing local planning rules in favour of single province-wide rules, limiting public input about developments, down-loading many development costs back onto municipalities and existing homeowners, and severely limiting local heritage and environmental safeguards.
Extreme recommendations for neighbourhoods would allow four-storey, multi-unit buildings on any residential lot and remove a key construction approval step for all projects of up to 10 floors. The recommendations would introduce province-wide zoning standards for minimum lot sizes, maximum building setbacks, minimum heights, shadow rules, building depth, landscaping and floor space.
"We fully support making housing more affordable," said Doug McKirgan, who chairs We Love Oakville, a coalition of the Town’s largest and most active residents’ groups.
"However, we believe that the new legislation will do nothing to make homes less expensive. It doesn’t address key factors driving runaway house prices in Ontario including developers stock-piling already-approved building sites, low interest rates, high migration rates to the GTHA and house-flipping as investment."
"People deserve a better plan," said McKirgan.
McKirgan said the group agrees with numerous recommendations in the government’s report, including the need for more in-fill housing, streamlined local development processes, increased provincial housing targets, and things like approving accessory apartments in existing neighbourhoods.
But only if changes are planned locally and not a province-wide, one-size-fits-all which will work for no one but the government and developers.
We Love Oakville is planning to send a strong message to the government and has set up an extensive website with information and links to send letters to the Premier, Housing Minister Steve Clark and local Conservative MPs. They are also spreading their message to concerned groups and people across the province to join the campaign.
You can see the website at Home (weloveoakville.org).
"It’s easy to call us Nimbys as the government is already doing," said McKirgan. "We all have a stake in working to make housing more affordable. We don’t want homes to be out of the financial reach of new home buyers, who include our children, relatives and friends."
"But increasing urban sprawl and dismantling stable neighbourhoods isn’t the right way to do it!"
