To keep up with an aging and growing population, it is projected that Ontario will need to build 1.5 million homes in the next ten years. Yet, Ontario has never built more than 850,000 homes in a ten-year period. Who is responsible for making this 1.5 million homes goal a reality, while making it happen in an environmentally responsible way?
The short answer: All three levels of government, along with the higher education sector,
developers and builders, trade unions, not-for-profit groups, and the financial services industry. Just to name a few.
This is why the PLACE Centre, in collaboration with Ontario’s Big City Mayors, has released a new report -- Working Together to Build 1.5 Million Homes – that calls upon all levels of government, industry, and labour actors in the housing system to come together to create a plan to make this 1.5 million homes objective a reality.
Any plan however, must address the six core challenges identified in the report as slowing down housing construction:
In particular, the first challenge regarding a lack of coordination creates a need for government, industry, and labour to come together and develop a plan outlining roles and responsibilities, alongside a shared accountability framework with regular meetings and updated plans to track the progress of each actor in the housing system. To track progress and hold actors accountable, appropriate, consistent, reliable, and current data must be made available.
There are dozens of other things that both governments and other actors in the system can do to address the rest of the challenges. The report also stresses that simply building homes is not sufficient and that thought must go into making communities where families can raise children, there is adequate infrastructure, and homes are affordable and accessible to all. And these communities must be built with the country’s climate and environmental goals in mind.
The Blueprint for More and Better Housing, released in early 2024, provided a plan for Canada to build 5.8 million affordable, resilient and low-carbon homes. Although many of the recommendations have proven popular with policymakers and the public, getting buy-in for the overall vision can be difficult. Too often, those policymakers and the public see […]
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There is a broad consensus that Canada is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has estimated that 5.8 million homes, nationally, need to be built by 2030 in order to address the housing affordability crisis. In Ontario, the provincial target is 1.5 million homes. As part of […]
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International students are an invaluable part of the prospective Canadian workforce that can help address the critical skilled labour shortages facing many Canadian industries, including construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. However, Canada’s current policies are at odds with the objective of having international students stay and work in Canada. If this is unaddressed, Canada will fail […]
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Canada’s forestry sector is facing a labour shortage due to a wave of baby boomer retirements and little interest from younger generations to pursue a career in forestry. Despite the need for more workers, women still comprise only 17% of the sector in Canada. One study also found that women in forestry are rarely in […]
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To keep up with an aging and growing population, it is projected that Ontario will need to build 1.5 million homes in the next ten years. Yet, Ontario has never built more than 850,000 homes in a ten-year period. Who is responsible for making this 1.5 million homes goal a reality, while making it happen […]
Read More