The Flow of Money - Issue 396

You might have heard this past week that the federal government gave the City of Guelph $21.4 million to help increase the supply of housing in Guelph (read more here). The money is coming from a $4 billion initiative called the “Housing Accelerator Fund” (HAF for short).

The idea behind the funding is to incentivize the creation of an additional 739 homes above the city average over the next 3 years.

The federal money won’t go directly to building homes. According to Mayor Cam Guthrie,

“Today’s announcement is a big leap forward for Guelph in addressing the housing crisis in our city…with this much-needed federal funding, we’re removing barriers to allow hundreds of additional housing units to help more Guelphites into the housing they need and deserve. This funding will also transform our policies and processes to accelerate the pace at which we increase the housing supply. Having the federal government at the table allows us to address Guelph’s housing shortage faster and with more affordable solutions. This is a real win-win for our community!”

— Mayor Cam Guthrie

The HAF programme encourages municipalities to build strategies around more affordable housing, reducing red tape and timelines for development and encouraging increased density. This includes a new housing affordability strategy to identify actions, advocacy, and partnership approaches to close housing supply gaps; as well as implementing new and enhanced processes to better support and streamline development and construction, including designing a new Community Planning Permit System.

This program also looks at examining the potential of increasing the number of allowable units per lot to encourage diverse housing options that offer the missing middle housing in existing neighbourhoods. So we may begin to see more fourplexes, multiplexes, detached secondary suites, or even tiny homes!

It’s encouraging to see all 3 levels of government working to solve this issue. This is in conjunction with Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, and the Provincial goal to increase housing supply in Ontario by 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. The City of Guelph has been assigned a housing target of 18,000 units by 2031 as part of the provincial goal.

In my research, I came across a “story map” of what the City is doing and proposing to do on their part to increase housing. It’s an interesting timeline and history on the subject and well worth reading. The eye opening part of the story map is towards the bottom where it talks about projects that have been approved and are just waiting for developers to submit plans (click on the “What We Need” tab to jump to the interesting part of the report).

In some cases, approvals have been on the books for 30 years!

Going back to the beginning of this story, the irony of the funding announcement is that the HAF programme is designed to fund efforts to remove barriers to new construction. One example is the so-called “Guelph Factor”, a nickname used to describe how notorious Guelph has become for being a place where builders and developers have to fight to get approvals and wait for many layers of approvals before conducting business.

I particularly like the idea that as a “right”, if you own a property you will have the right to create more density. This could mean a duplex, or a triplex, or an accessory building unit. It’s good to see some creativity and a thinking outside the box mentality allowed into the approval process.

It’s this ability to be less rigid and more flexible that is going to help accelerate the solution to the housing challenges our society faces. This problem is complex and multifaceted, and a simple solution of just building more, or increasing interest rates or taxes to eliminate demand, will not bring about a permanent or acceptable solution.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the results now that we’ve got everybody’s attention.

Follow along with us as we see how these new programs & increased funding affect the housing market and where this will take us.

Have a great weekend.

Paul Fitzpatrick

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