The latest provincial budget, released last week, is again frustrating for those committed to expanding the supply of badly needed affordable non-profit and co-op housing. The Ontario government remains focused on supporting further expansion of for-profit housing and the budget never mentions non-profit or co-op housing.
But even on its own terms, the government isn’t meeting its targets. It has committed itself to getting 150,000 units a year built but last year, Ontario had only 74,600 housing starts. The budget projects fewer this year. The number of starts for single detached homes—the type of homes the Ford government focuses on—was the lowest since records began being kept in the mid-1950s.
Yet the government proposes no change in direction. The only big funding increases related to housing are to existing programs—up to $5 billion for the Building Ontario Fund, which covers affordable housing (however defined) but also many other areas; and $400 million added to the Housing-Enabling Water Systems Fund. Last year’s budget said the government was studying support for the modular construction industry and this year’s provides $50 million—over five years.
Renters in Ontario continue to struggle with high rents and precarious tenure because rent control has been gutted. But the only budget provision related to rental housing is to allow municipalities, in 2026, to reduce their property tax rate for eligible affordable rental housing—but the province won’t compensate them for the lost revenue that local taxpayers will have to make up!
The budget calls on the federal government to introduce further measures to improve housing affordability and ease conditions on infrastructure funding, even as Ontario’s spending in the Municipal Affairs and Housing Department will decline this year by $380 million.