Population and Housing

[nms]

In a piece of news that likely surprises no one, "Ontario has over a million homes in the pipeline, but needs developers to put shovels in the ground: report" (CBC)

Toronto's chief planner Gregg Lintern said the city approved an average of over 29,700 residential units a year from 2017 to 2021. During that same period, only around 16,000 units were built annually.

The Hamiltion Spectator wrote an article to cover the topic, "1.5-million new Ontario homes already within reach: planners’ study".

The Spectator article quoted a home-builder:

Collins-Williams said he believes the province’s “decisive actions” on land supply and legislative planning changes will help get more housing built faster.

But he added the industry still faces a “perfect storm” of factors — including inflation, labour shortages and ongoing “politics around housing” — that are working against getting shovels in the ground.

The report was released by the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario, but I can not find any reference to them elsewhere online, nor a copy of the report. I would be interested to see if the report chose Waterloo Region as one of the 15 municipalities studied and also whether the approved, yet unbuilt, units cover the full range of housing needs, or more narrower bands of the market (eg single-bedroom units).  If the former, getting these units build would be a good thing.  If the latter, it could simply perpetuate the problem of not creating housing to match the full range needed in Canada (eg multi-bedroom units regardless of building type that are suitable for families; or affordable units; or rental units)