The Ford government’s latest housing bill has passed its third and final reading at Queen’s Park and is set to become law before the end of the week.
The province’s Bill 185, the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Housing Act, was unveiled in early April with a wide-ranging set of changes to how homes are planned and built in Ontario.
Among the changes included in the bill are a reduction in the amount of parking spaces developers need to provide, special rules to allow student housing to be built faster, and the reversal of previously introduced discounts for developers.
Housing Minister Paul Calandra previously described the measures as “targeted” changes to planning rules to speed up homebuilding.
Ontario aims to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031 and has included long-term care beds and basement units in its figures to attempt to reach that goal. In 2023, Ontario recorded 109,011 new housing starts, below the 150,000, 10-year average it would need to achieve the target.
The government previously said it has not calculated how many new homes the changes in its housing bill will bring online.
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Opposition politicians have called the measures “weak” and a “random grab-bag of small-ball measures.”
On Wednesday, Ontario NDP housing critic Jessica Bell said she felt the government had missed an opportunity with a “mediocre and weak bill” but that the legislation was not especially problematic.
“It’s not a terrible bill,” she said. “We are pleased the government listened to municipalities and reversed some of the worst development fee cuts that we saw in previous bills.”
The new housing law removes minimum requirements for developers when it comes to parking. Previously homebuilders were bound to provide a certain number of parking spaces with each new unit they sold, a demand removed by the new law.
Cities will also now be able to redirect new infrastructure away from developments that aren’t being built fast enough and remove approvals altogether if they take too long to begin building homes that have the green light.
Some discounts for developers announced by the Ford government’s previous housing bills have been scrapped.
Universities have been told through the bill that they can bypass the Planning Act entirely. The move would allow the post-secondary institutions near carte blanche to build in an effort to ramp up the amount of student housing.
Initially, the law had included a ban on most third parties — ranging from developers to residents — appealing against development decisions. Later, that was watered down to allow landowners, airports and a select few others to lodge appeals against decisions they aren’t directly involved with.
The proposed law passed its third and final reading on Wednesday and is expected to be signed into law through royal assent before the house rises on Thursday.
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