The Ontario government has awarded nearly $3.7 million to the City of Guelph for achieving at least 80 percent of its provincially designated housing targets.

Guelph broke ground on 1,279 new homes in 2024, achieving more than 85 percent of its 2024 housing target.

The city will use the funding from the Building Faster Fund to build more homes and community infrastructure.

Announced in August 2023, the three-year, $1.0-billion fund is designed to encourage municipalities to speed up approval processes and get more homes built faster. The program rewards municipalities that make significant progress toward their targets by providing funding for housing-enabling and community-enabling infrastructure.

In addition to the Building Faster Fund, Ontario is investing more than $2 million in the City of Guelph through the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program that will enable the construction of nearly 2,000 new homes.

“We are thrilled that Guelph has successfully met its 2024 housing target, which has enabled us to secure much-needed support from the Ontario government through their Building Faster Fund,” said Mayor Cam Guthrie. “This funding will play a crucial role in our continued efforts to create diverse housing options for our community.”

For the first 10 months of 2025, Ontario saw 18,103 rental starts, an increase of more than 34 percent compared to the same period in 2024. That figure is the highest level of rental starts on record for this time of the year, surpassing the total year-to-date rental starts for all of 2024.

To help lower costs for first-time home buyers and spur the construction of more homes, the province is proposing to rebate the full provincial portion of the HST for first-time home buyers of most new homes.

If approved through federal legislation, the rebate would eliminate the full eight percent provincial portion of the HST for first-time home buyers on qualifying new homes valued up to $1 million.