Highlights of the Housing Policies of the Provincial Parties
Context: A total of 81,325 new homes were built and completed in Ontario in 2021, the highest level since 2004. Ontario’s best decade ever saw 846,089 units completed in the 10 years ending in 1978.
Ontario has rent control but it only limits rent increases for some tenants. If a tenant moves, the rent on their old unit can be increased by any amount. And there are no rent controls at all on units that came onto the market after mid-November 2018.
The platform of the Green Party, which had one sitting member, https://files.ontariogreens.ca/platform/gpo-platform-2022-en-web.pdf includes calls to:
- Apply rent controls to all units.
- Build 182,000 new permanently affordable community housing units in a decade, 60,000 of them supportive housing.
- Mandate inclusionary zoning that would require at least 20 per cent of all units in housing projects above a certain size to be affordable.
- Speed up processing of housing projects led by non-profit housing providers and provide low-interest loans.
- Allow single family dwellings to be divided into multiple condo units.
- Create a portable housing benefit to help 311,000 households pay the rent.
- Restore the goal of ending homelessness within a decade.
Liberals https://ontarioliberal.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Our-Liberal-Plan-for-Ontario.pdf propose to:
- Get 1.5 million new homes built in Ontario over the next 10 years, double the pace of the past decade. No specifics on how many would be affordable.
- “We’ll go after the rules and red-tape that are driving home costs and prices up.” They would “unlock” more provincial land by burying electric transmission lines and redeveloping underutilized strip malls and offices.
- Introduce new taxes on vacant homes in urban areas and developers sitting on land.
- Reinstate rent control everywhere in Ontario.
- Homelessness isn’t mentioned.
The NDP https://www.ontariondp.ca/platform/affordability (A more detailed platform is at https://mcusercontent.com/353019c4e982ae7eb8ea53150/files/a5e91717-c4c3-4139-9958-93672890fef6/Homes_You_Can_Afford_EN.07.pdf The platform includes:
- Apply full rent control on all units and stop unfair evictions for a landlord’s own use.
- Mandate universal design building codes to meet the needs of people of all ages and abilities.
- Help first-time homebuyers with a shared equity loan for up to 10 per cent of the home’s value.
- End exclusionary zoning to enable construction of more affordable missing middle housing, like duplexes, triplexes and townhouses, within existing urban boundaries.
- Create a public agency, Housing Ontario, to build 250,000 homes operated by public, non-profit and co-op agencies. No timeline given.
- Introduce an annual speculation and vacancy tax on residential properties to apply to homes not occupied by their owners, at a rate of 2 per cent of the assessed value. Also maintain the non-resident speculation Tax at 20 per cent.
- Create a portable housing benefit to help 311,000 households pay the rent.
- Ensure tenants and landlords get prompt, fair, in-person hearings at the Landlord and Tenant Board.
- Restore the goal of ending chronic homelessness within a decade.
The platform of the New Blue Party, which had one sitting member, does not mention housing: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f7c908f88a7aa2fbb183624/t/624a74f8cfb4dd7278e67bc9/1649046776267/New+Blueprint.pdf
The platform of the Ontario Party, which had one sitting member, calls for
- Allowing property owners in Ontario’s “most housing-deprived cities,” to build two and four-unit residences in single-family zones
- Giving Ontario the same right to set immigration policy as Quebec and use those powers to adjust immigration rates and settlement patterns to reduce demand in many Ontario cities.
- Ban foreign purchases of homes
- Create a money-laundering task force to root out corruption in real estate sales https://www.ontarioparty.ca/our_platform_en
Progressive Conservatives https://budget.ontario.ca/2022/chapter-1d.html#section-1 laid out its platform in its May budget. It includes:
- Mention that the government’s Task Force on Housing Affordability recommended building 1.5 million homes in a decade but the PCs haven’t adopted that goal.
- Streamline and speed up municipal planning processes, with the Community Infrastructure and Housing Accelerator that will regulate the use of land and location, height, size and spacing of buildings, a Streamline Development Approval Fund, Development Approval Data Standards and an Audit and Accountability Fund.
- Invest $19 million over three years to hire more Landlord and Tenant Board adjudicators and increase resources for mediation.
- Call on the federal government to invest more in Ontario for community housing, based on Ontario’s highest-in-Canada level of core housing need.
- Work with municipalities to explore the use of vacant home taxes.
- Increase fines for unethical behaviour by new home builders.
- On homelessness, the platform notes amounts spent between 2020 and 2022 but not future commitments.