Ontario developers deny they're feeding housing crisis by sitting on land
CBC
Developers are pushing back against claims that they're slowing the pace of new home construction in Ontario by sitting on land that's already been approved for housing.
New home construction starts in Ontario have been running well short of the 150,000 per year pace needed to hit Premier Doug Ford's target of 1.5 million by 2031.
Still, a new report commissioned by two of Ontario's largest housing industry lobby groups finds residential construction currently at a 33-year high.
"The statistics speak volumes," said Neil Rodgers, interim CEO of the Ontario Home Builders' Association, which jointly commissioned the report along with the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).
"We had to dispel a myth that the industry was not operating at capacity, that we were sitting on supply," said Rodgers in an interview.
The report, published Thursday, shows 164,000 housing units currently under construction in Ontario, more than at any time since 1990.
"The industry is working at maximum capacity or close to maximum capacity at this point," said Justin Sherwood, BILD's senior vice-president of communications.
Inadequate supply is considered one of the key factors in the high cost of buying or renting a home, particularly in Ontario's bigger cities.
The development industry and the Ford government have repeatedly heaped much of the blame for the tight supply on municipalities and regional councils for taking too much time to approve developments.
Those cities and regions have in turn pointed to projects that have all the necessary approvals, with the potential for hundreds of thousands of new homes, while developers have yet to put a shovel in the ground.
An inventory produced last year by the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario found some 1.25 million housing units were either approved or in the approval pipeline around the province.
The new report commissioned by the industry groups takes issue with how that 2023 inventory has been framed.
Only 331,000 housing units tallied in the inventory have all necessary approvals in place and can be considered "development ready," says Thursday's report.
"I think that the narrative that developers and home builders are sitting on lots, while it may be politically expedient, is damaging," said Sherwood in an interview.
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