Provincial candidates must address housing crisis for today and tomorrow

One-and-a-half million. Read that again. One-and-a-half-million.

That’s how many homes need to be built over the next decade, just to keep up with Ontario’s expected population growth. At our current rate, we are simply not building enough to keep up with that demand.

“We must dramatically increase housing supply and variety, to ensure everyone has a fair shot at attaining a home that works for their needs,” says Bob Schickedanz, president of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association.

“Now is the time for political parties to commit to fixing the endless process, regulation and restrictions that have made it impossible to build more homes at the rate we need.”

Staggering numbers

The numbers are staggering – and not just home prices. Ontario’s Ministry of Finance projects the population will grow by 2.27 million people over the next decade, leading to approximately 910,000 net new households, primarily couples planning on having children. Of those households, it’s estimated that 195,000 of them will live in highrise units, while the rest will live in all other home types, at a time when Canada has the lowest amount of housing per population of any G7 country.

Those are needs for 10 years from now, but if we look a decade back, the average price of a home in 2011 was $329,000. Today, you have to reverse the “9” and the “3” for an average 2022 price of $923,000. That’s a 180-per-cent price jump, while the average income has increased by only about 38 per cent.

One can only imagine what it will be in another 10 years if we don’t build more housing, starting right now.

“We won’t be able to regulate or tax our way out of this shortage; we’ll only be able to build out of it,” Schickedanz says.

Voting and governing for change

And he means not just detached homes for single families; it’s townhouses, duplexes and triplexes, so that we have the right mix of homeownership. Building more homes for the future will mean voting and governing to change red tape laws today, particularly around zoning regulations.

For example, in medium-sized cities such as Hamilton and Burlington, a huge percentage of land has zoning restrictions limiting housing options to only single-detached homes. Combine those zoning rules, the average price increase gaps between homes and wages, and it’s no surprise that between July 2019 and July 2020, 60,000 people left Toronto and Peel Region for other parts of the province, driving to qualify for family-friendly housing that met their needs.

Now prices have increased in those areas outside of the GTA, as well, and with demand only growing, all parties need to have housing as their top priority.

Right mix of housing

“If you go back five years, about 100,000 people have left the Greater Golden Horseshoe to find homes elsewhere, and here is where the housing crisis affects everyone,” Schickedanz says. “Migration like that affects everything – employment, labour availability, the buying power of locals who are pushed out of the market.”

The OHBA says the provincial election campaign marks a critical point in the crisis. All parties must show not only how they will increase supply to get those million homes built, but also that it is the right mix of housing, which will require addressing those outdated red tape regulations.
Otherwise, Schickedanz says, the numbers may be much, much more difficult to digest 10 years from now.