Federal housing minister weighs in on Windsor's less 'ambitious' housing fund proposal
Windsor's application for as much as $70M in federal housing funding was denied on Wednesday
Windsor's bid for up to $70 million in federal housing funding is over.
The news came Wednesday in a letter from federal housing minister Sean Fraser. He says Windsor's application simply wasn't as ambitious as the many others put forward because of one factor: the city's refusal to allow four units by right on any residential property in the city.
Windsor had, in its application, proposed allowing four units on about 50 kilometres of road. And per provincial rules, three units are already permitted by right in the city.
In response, Dilkens called the decision 'disappointing' but said fourplexes on all residential lots, without public consultation, "does not work for our city."
"Without question, there is an urgent need for more homes, here and all across the country," Dilkens stated. "As mayor of the City of Windsor, I am steadfast in my commitment to safeguard Windsor neighbourhoods and the vital infrastructure that supports them.
"I refuse to compromise our neighbourhoods and to do away with fair public consultation with our residents in exchange for uncertain funding that will be tied to sacrificing the makeup of our communities."
CBC Windsor's Chris Ensing spoke with Fraser about the decision, what other municipalities are doing with the money and Windsor's chances for future funding.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. We're talking about the Housing Accelerator Fund and the City of Windsor's application. At the centre of this whole debate seems to be fourplexes as of right. How did you come up with the number four? Why is that so important?
So what we're seeing across different parts of the country is, when we start considering the applications that came in, is it started to emerge as a common theme that certain cities seem willing to go to four units as of right. When we combined that practice ... with the recommendations of Ontario's Housing Affordability Task Force, it made sense to go in that direction.
One of the things that we've seen as well is when you look at the economic case that builders need to make when they're taking decisions about whether to say yes or no to a project, you tend in a lot of communities to see the balance tips when you can actually get four units out of a building because you'll have four families living there, can sell four homes or rent four units. And the difference between having three and four is often the difference between having a viable project or not.
But when we saw cities across the country demonstrate their willingness in their applications to permit four units as of right, the competition raised the bar organically.
Windsor's mayor has said that inside of this application four units as of right is fine but only in particular neighbourhoods. Why was selected neighbourhoods not enough for this application?
Well, when you think about what that actually means is that, in areas that you don't have that more permissible zoning practice, what you're essentially doing is telling people who own their own land, during a housing crisis that they're not allowed to build homes for their neighbours.
Keep in mind this is not something that we are forcing upon any cities. No one is entitled to Housing Accelerator Fund money. This is not a personal spat whatsoever with the mayor, who I've come to quite like.
Municipalities are well within their rights to determine the kind of zoning that exists in different neighbourhoods, and the federal government is well within its rights to provide funding to the most ambitious applications that we've seen across Canada.
With 540 applications that came in and enough funding to support about 150 of them, It's difficult for communities to qualify if they stop short of the very high standard that the most ambitious cities have set.
One of the things we've heard during this debate here locally... is that their neighbours might not want that. What do you say to homeowners who say that they don't want four units built beside them?
That's a conversation that plays out at a community level. My own personal view is that you can build four unit buildings that work harmoniously in a community.
But if communities decide that's not what they want to do, that's something that they're entitled to. But it may mean that we're going to find a more ambitious neighbouring city to provide federal funding to if we can incentivize them to build even more homes.
You've talked about the idea of not being entitled to the Housing Accelerator Fund. What does this decision mean for other money that the City of Windsor would get in relation to housing and infrastructure? Are they going to see a dip and what they got previously because of what's happened here?
No, the funding that we've put in place previously — for example toward the Meadowbrook Place project that I had the chance to tour when I visited Windsor last — is locked in. The building exists.
However, going forward, the different programs that we look at will have different criteria attached to them. Many of the projects that we deal with don't necessarily touch on municipal zoning issues but deal with buildings that are being constructed by players in the industry who agree to provide housing at a particular rate of affordability.
And for cities that have... been approved through this, can you give us a sense of what they're doing with that money?
It varies from city to city. You can imagine what will work in London may be different in Windsor, may be different in Halifax. The kinds of things that we see, we included in our list of best practices that we published online.
Many of them have agreed to citywide, end exclusionary zoning and permit four units as of right. There are other cities that have taken extraordinary steps to not just permit four units, but even four stories or more, particularly close to transit: within walking distance, to transit that we fund federally.
Will this funding close now for Windsor? Is this where, if this application doesn't change, it's over? Or is there another review once those applications come in? People have pointed to other cities doing the fourplexes as of right, but what if Windsor starts off a conversation of other cities saying we're not including that?
So every city who has been approved, with the exception of the stream for small, rural, remote and Indigenous communities, every city that's been approved, has agreed to permit four units as of right on a city-wide basis. There have been no exceptions. I don't expect that there will be.
To the extent that Windsor wants to change its approach, we will have to wait for some future version of this fund because the fund has a finite amount of money, despite it being a $4 billion fund. The ambition that we've seen from cities has allowed us to identify contributions we're going to make that will exhaust that fund. I expect that will be fully allocated very soon.
In the future, should there be additional rounds through budgetary processes that we can open up, we're happy to re-engage. However, that funding does not exist at this particular point in time, and we would still insist that only the most ambitious cities receive federal funding when it comes to the different changes that they're willing to make.
With files from Chris Ensing