A busy month for housing
 
After a few years of letting the federal government take up most of the headlines on housing, Queen's Park roared onto the front page with big story after big story last month.

Summits

The province hosted a Housing Affordability Summit with the big city mayors on January 19th. You can see the coverage here and the opening remarks from the Premier and Minister here (have patience, there is a lengthy lag at the start).

The province also hosted a Rural Housing Roundtable, January 21st, just ahead of the Rural Ontario Municipal Association (ROMA) meeting in January. (More coverage is here.) Rural municipalities followed by launching their own Housing Task Force. 

The Task Force

The draft report of the province's Housing Affordability Task Force was leaked, this month. That gave some insight into where policy is going. The draft in circulation contains wide-ranging recommendations covering everything from municipal zoning bylaws to the Ontario Land Tribunal and immigration policy. (Click here to join in on Ontario for All workshops and get a closer look at the details.)

Regulations

In the midst of all of this, the province is reviewing the regulations that govern social housing in Ontario. The new regulations are not fully spelled out yet but they appear to change the standards that housing providers have to meet when providing social housing, creating more room to move away from RGI housing to other models and to change eligibility criteria. You can learn more here. The province is accepting feedback on the regulation until February 18th. Have your say on these regulations here. (To learn more, just email us here for a recent paper with nonprofit sector analysis on the regulations.) 

What it means

All these events showed the province focused firmly on red tape, delays, and regulations. The government created a fund to support red-tape-reduction initiatives, the Task Force appears to be advocating for big reductions in regulations covering everything from zoning to fire safety, and the Minister suggested legislation could be coming this spring to address these issues. The focus is very much on building far more housing far faster, creating more "supply." 

United Ways from across Ontario, affordable housing providers, and advocates all reached out ahead of these events with an open letter calling for progress on key issues, including intergovernmental coordination, increased investment in creating affordable homes, improved Indigenous housing, and protection for renters. More homes are certainly badly needed, but affordable homes are in particularly short supply, and growth in affordable units, coupled with efforts to preserve affordability, will also be important. 

What's Next

Over the next few weeks, Ontario will roll out more details on where it's going on housing policy. We'd love to know your thoughts and we'll keep you up to date with what's happening. 

Share your thoughts on housing policy

If you're interested in participating in efforts to help nonprofits shape the future of housing policy, Ontario for All will be hosting Housing Policy Workshops this month. Just click here to sign up.