BILD, OHBA outline plan to speed up Ontario housing construction
Two of Ontario’s home-building advocates have released a five-point plan to help guide the province in meeting its goal of building hundreds of thousands of new houses in the next 10 years.
The Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA) and the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) say their recommendations would create a fair and equitable funding model for housing, shorten approval timeframes for construction, and make land available to support growth.
Their priorities are based on the February 2022 recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force.
“Ontario has a housing shortage, and the lack of supply is driving up housing costs across the province,” said Luca Bucci, CEO of the OHBA. “We call on the provincial government to continue to play a strong leadership role in defining this change and to work with our industry to implement these recommendations.”
The recommendations from BILD and OHBA are designed to speed the delivery of new homes, add supply and bring balance to the market. They include:
- Making homes more affordable by speeding up approval times and eliminating red tape. Each month of delay in approvals adds thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home.
- Adding certainty to the cost of building a new home by addressing out-of-control development fees. Already, fees and taxes from all levels of government account for up to 25% of the cost of a new home.
- Making new lands available to build new housing and support future growth, as home supply and costs are highly dependent on land availability.
- Laying the infrastructure groundwork for future growth by ensuring servicing and transportation infrastructure are prioritized.
- Taking the politics out of planning to ensure that local decision making does not undermine the provision of new housing.
“The evidence is clear, solutions have been identified, consensus has been achieved—now it’s time for action,” said BILD President and CEO Dave Wilkes. “Our industry’s five-point plan outlines the changes necessary to ensure that new home owners can afford to live in the GTA and that our region’s economy prospers in the long term.”
A full copy of the plan is available on the BILD website.