It’s been almost a year since the Ontario government established an ambitious target of building 1.5 million homes within 10 years.
Kingston’s share of that has been set at building 800 housing units a year for the next decade.
In early 2023, the province passed the More Homes Built Faster act, which gave municipalities across the province goals, and more tools to help ease the housing crisis.
Kingston is well on its way to meet its target of 8,000 homes built by 2031.
“I think it’s a real testament to our excellent planning staff at the city, and then working collaboratively with builders,” said Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson.
According to provincial tracking data, the City of Kingston crushed its 2023 housing starts goals, achieving 193% progress. The city produced 1,131 housing starts in 2023, well past its goal of 800.
Kingston and Belleville are among just 11 municipalities that managed to pass their 2023 goals, while most others just met or did not meet theirs.
Not only is this fact a point of pride for Paterson and the city, but they say it will, in turn, help make further development easier.
“The fact that we’ve exceeded our target for 2023 qualifies us to apply for additional provincial funding which we can then move in to more infrastructure which will then unlock more housing,” he said.
Meantime, the need for housing has presented an opportunity for developers as well.
The mayor said that the city has been working with the public and private sectors to add a variety of housing.
Barry Smith, who is the vice president of Taggart Investments, said the influx of building to meet the goals has been great, but worries that people aren’t able to keep up with rising housing costs and interest rates.
“The down payment that’s necessary for young people to be able to buy a house, it’s just not easy for them to come up with that type of money,” said Smith.
He said part of that problem owes to fluctuating costs of construction materials and labour, which in turn drives up the price.
Regardless, he said, they are forging on to get multiple projects in Kingston going in the near future.
“Pretty soon, we are developing the quarry out on Highway 15 and we hope to have that ready sometime this summer which would be about another 240 doors that will be going in there,” he added.
While nailing the target on the first year is nice, Mayor Paterson said it can’t stop there, adding that between the provincial target and the growing population in Kingston, a similar effort to this year’s will be needed moving forward.