Housing summit with province provided chance for 'unvarnished' talk about problems: Chair Karen Redman

A housing summit between the Ontario government and municipalities from across the province was "the beginning of a conversation" about how to address several issues, says Regional Chair Karen Redman.

Redman says the province and municipal leaders had a "unvarnished and honest" talk about the housing situation in Ontario right now — the lack of affordable housing, the cost of homes and supplies to build more going up, and the rental market.

The province didn't offer any funding for housing, but did announce a new "streamline development approval fund" of more than $45 million that officials say will help municipalities "modernize, streamline and accelerate processes for managing and approving housing applications."

Those kind of behind-the-scenes improvements are "a step forward," Redman says because when the process of paperwork to get housing done is smoother, it means projects can get underway more quickly.

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic says the city has started digitally processing housing paperwork and doing so meant staff were able to bring down approval times on projects at a rate of 60 per cent.

But both Vrbanovic and Redman say that governments can always make improvements and this announcement was just one part of the issue.

"We keep insisting that it has to be four levels of government looking at how we address affordability from: Do we have skilled labourers? Do we have planners coming out of university that can help process the planning documents," Redman said. "And we know that the price of building has gone through the ceiling because of supply issues. So all of those things are inputs."

She said senior levels of government need to participate in that conversation and change because they "have levers that they can pull that are not available to municipalities."

Vrbanovic says there needs to be collaboration between the various levels of government as well as the private sector, not-for-profts, financial services and other groups and "respecting municipal decision making in a local implementation model will be really important."

Region's plan for more affordable housing

Redman says the province really wanted to talk about residential building during the summit, held virtually on Wednesday.

The region has 36,000 units that are either registered or draft approved but as of yet, unbuilt. She also noted the region processed nearly $635-million in new building permits between January and June of 2021.

"We know that developers want to develop. We know that that price of houses have gone up, and affordability is a very elastic term," Redman said.

She said one important area that needs to be looked at is the rental framework throughout the province.

"People want to be able to rent. We don't have enough rental affordable units and affordability could mean so many different things to different people. It's more than money," she said.

The region has pledged to build 2,500 affordable housing units in a five-year period and Redman thinks that's an attainable goal because of rapid housing funding from the federal government and other positive recent announcements that supported housing and the local shelter system.

Vrbanovic said the summit was successful in that it "allowed a lot of great ideas to be put on the table."

"It's ultimately going to be something that's going to take bold action and leadership from all parties that need to be part of the solution and really a collective mindset and paradigm shift to to address many systemic issues that have been with us for a long, long time," he said.

"I think it's important to remember that we didn't get to this situation overnight, and we're not going to solve it through one meeting or overnight, either."