Tri-cities likely to lose $15 million after not meeting housing targets for 2023

Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge are likely to be denied $15 million or more in provincial funding after failing to meet 80 per cent of their housing target set for 2023. All three cities were only able to achieve 56 per cent of their target.

The province created a $1.2 billion infrastructure fund which was meant to help municipalities like Waterloo Region increase housing projects over the next few years. Part of that deal was that each city had to create a housing target for 2023 and if they were unable to meet 80 per cent of that goal, the city would not get some of that new funding.

Waterloo Mayor, Dorothy McCabe, spoke on The Mike Farwell Show on Friday about why the region was unable to meet its housing targets for last year.

“Inflation is high, the cost of construction is high, we’re in an unusual period of time right now, so there are market forces at play that are causing our developers and builders in our community to delay projects,” said McCabe.

The Ford government pledged that any city that exceeds annual housing targets will get bonus funding.

Ontario Mayors, like McCabe, may miss out on receiving new funding for reasons out of their control like high prices and the rising cost of construction materials.

“There’s the work that municipalities do to get housing developments to the point that building permits can be issued and from there, it’s up to the develop builder community. We’re not being measured on the things that we are actually doing or are within our wheelhouse and our responsibility,” said McCabe. “We continue to say to the province it’s not a fair way to measure what we’re doing.”

All three cities in the area aimed to have construction started on 5, 133 homes last year. But altogether they were only able to achieve 56 per cent of that target.

The region has been facing a housing crisis since the pandemic started that McCabe says is contributing to homelessness and other issues.

“Before interest rates were increased dramatically and pre-COVID there were housing approvals in places and building permits issued, that developers had not moved on,” said McCabe.

McCabe added that some projects have been approved since 2017 and the projects could have already started. McCabe wants the Ontario government to put something in place that pushes projects to move forward after approved by city councils.

“The province really needs to have a better understanding of what’s happening on the ground with different municipalities.”

McCabe said that last year Waterloo had over 23,000 applications to build housing in the city that have not all been approved and are at various stages of development.

On Dec. 11, Waterloo had two applications in front of city council that totalled 25 per cent of Waterloo’s housing target. One for about 500 units near the University of Waterloo and another for about 6000 units at a development slated for the former Kraus Carpets. Both of those housing developments had to be paused from a lack of funding.  

“We approved 25 per cent of our housing pledges in one night so there is a high, high degree of interest from the building community to build in Waterloo,” McCabe said.

McCabe is confident they will easily be able to meet their 10-year target of adding 70,000 homes by 2031.