Ontario on track to hit 2031 housing target

Aaliya Fatima: Senior Reporter

The Ontario government set a target to build 1.5 million houses by 2031 to tackle the housing crisis.

The government said it assigned specific goals for 50 of the largest municipalities in Ontario to achieve the housing target.

Paul Anglin, a retired professor of real estate at the University of Guelph, said building extra homes is part of what is needed to solve the housing affordability problem.

Anglin said, “The more houses that cities can build in the right places is a good thing.”

He said there is demand, and the solution is on the supply side.

A three-year Building Faster Fund of $1.2 billion was set up in August 2023 as an incentive to reward municipalities that reach at least 80 per cent of their annual targets and bonus funding for those who exceed it.

Paul Calandra, minister of municipal affairs and housing, said the funding will be important.

“The Building Faster Fund was originally and is continuously focused on shovels in the ground,” he said in a media release.

Calandra said the funding is a form of recognition for the cities that have reached their provincially set targets and should not discourage other cities that were unable to do so.

The recent housing updates in

Toronto, Brampton, Belleville, Milton and Pickering have indicated that these municipalities have exceeded their 2023 housing targets.

Ontario said Pickering received $5,200,000, Milton $8,400,000, Belleville $1,240,000 and Brampton $25.5 million as bonuses through the same funding.

Anglin said he was surprised Milton surpassed its target so quickly. It takes years to go from a builder having an idea to building new housing to someone moving in.

“This is why demand-side initiatives are popular because they’re asked, but the supply-side initiatives are in general, more successful. They just take longer,” Anglin said.

Ontario’s housing tracker said Toronto surpassed its 2023 target by 51 per cent and received additional funding of $114 million through the Building Faster Fund.

“Toronto just needs lots of housing,” Anglin said.

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said in a recent media conference that it has become more difficult than ever for people in Toronto to find a home they can afford.

Laura Taylor, an associate professor from the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, said the demand for housing remains strong.

“Meeting a target is one thing but housing pressure, meaning the number of people who want to live in Toronto, isn’t easing,” Taylor said.

She said rent will continue to be high because of societal processes like immigration and in-country migration, and people choosing to live in Toronto has not lessened.

Taylor said the city of Toronto meeting its housing targets is an achievement but predicts that there will be continued pressure.