Toronto gets $67.2M housing cheque as Ontario housing numbers falter
Unlikely that Ford government achieves target of 1.5 million new homes by 2031
The Ontario government has awarded Toronto $67.2 million in funding after the city came close to hitting its housing starts target last year — but provincial officials say they'll be handing out fewer such cheques in 2025 as not as many cities are hitting their goals.
"You have certain mayors in certain towns and cities that absolutely refuse to build. They aren't building a doghouse," Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference at Toronto City Hall Friday, flanked by Mayor Olivia Chow. "They aren't building a garage, and we all know it.
"And then you have great cities, and great mayors like Mayor Chow here that's saying, 'We're going to build, we're going to build as quickly as possible because we need the housing.'"
This is the second round of funding from the province's Building Faster Fund, which provides funding to municipalities that hit at least 80 per cent of their provincially designated housing targets. Announced in 2023, it promised to provide $1.2 billion over a three-year period to municipalities that achieve annual targets for new home construction starts.
Toronto broke ground on 20,999 new homes last year, the province said in a news release, which works out to be 88 per cent of its 2024 housing target.
Municipalities missing housing targets
Though Toronto appears to be on the right track, it's now increasingly unlikely that Ford's government will achieve its stated target of 1.5 million new homes by 2031.
The latest Ontario budget forecasts 71,800 housing starts in 2025, followed by 74,800 next year and 82,500 in 2027.
There have been 260,000 actual housing starts in the three years since the target was set. So if you add in the projections for 2025 and 2026, the province would only be about one-quarter of the way toward its goal at the end of next year, which is the halfway point of the target timeline.
The province distributed only $280 million from the fund in its first year after more than half of Ontario's municipalities failed to hit the housing start targets in 2023.
The government hasn't updated its housing start tracker since October 2024. As of that point, nine months through the year, only 11 of 50 municipalities had reached their annual benchmark.
Country facing housing 'crisis,' housing minister says
When asked by CBC News at Friday's news conference why the provincial government is no longer showing the numbers for what each municipality is building, Housing Minister Rob Flack said that he would "have to get back to you."
"Housing starts are down. We know that," Flack said. "There's a crisis, a major crisis in this country. We're going to hand out some nice Building Faster Fund cheques — not as many and not for as much this year as we did last year."
Flack went on to say that's why the government introduced Bill 17, which is intended to accelerate permit issuance and streamline zoning rules. It also defers the collection of development charges until occupancy, which the province says will provide greater cash flow flexibility.
"We know the numbers are down, but if we don't make the changes like we did in Bill 17, we're never going to hit our targets," Flack said.
Speaking at the news conference, Chow said that the provincial funding will help build homes in the city faster.
"At the end of the day we have a housing crisis, we need to build, whether through deferring development charges, exempting development charges, building the missing middle," she said. "We need to build, build, build a lot of housing, especially affordable housing."
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With files from Mike Crawley