We’re doing our part in terms of moving the needle for more housing.
But we still have delays in construction, I want to touch on that very briefly because as much as we are hitting our targets, and we will hit our targets I believe, we still are slow.
A very prominent address is 40 Yeomans Street, the old Ben Bleecker property at the North End. Originally we zoned the north half of that as one block in November 2021. Nothing happened, I’ve heard that the property has sold and then has now been repurchased and the north half has now been rezoned into two blocks in February 2023. There’s no site plan application to date, so that land sits.
In 2019, a capital budget item was walked on in the amount of $1.8 million dollars, adding the Avenue Road Sanitary Sewer Extension Project and it was funded from the Sanitary Sewer Reserve fund at $1.8 million and I know Councillor Thompson brings up water and wastewater all the time and you know this is a significant amount of money that goes towards the Village of Avonlea. The Village of Avonlea was approved for zoning for 750 homes. Right now, with the sanitary sewer leading that way, and the rezoning, that property is now up for sale, you can look on the listings locally, for $29 million dollars. So is that building or is that land speculation? It sits.
Another one is 660 Sidney St, two apartment buildings just near Battlefield. Building permits were actually requested pre-COVID and then were suggested or were asked to put on hold, and and now they’ve just been issued as of July 28th, and let me tell you as of this date that ground is as flat as flat can be. There is no development.
While builders have said – and I’ve got a long list here and I won’t go into it – they say they’re building, but yet we can point to examples where we’ve done what we have to do, or we’ve done what we can do, to the point where there’s nothing coming forward from a developer or a builder to move those approvals on, that’s a concern.
… So when I cite examples where we’re approving things, but yet it sits, that’s a problem in terms of the permits. In essence, we are getting evaluated, if you will, based on what’s being done in the private sector to get it to a building permit. That’s a concern. We should be evaluated on what we can control, not what others can control.
In a letter that the minister of Municipal Affairs provided you Mayor Ellis on August 22nd and it was shared with us on our agenda, it says: “Ontario will be consulting with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario the Housing Supply Action Plan implementation team and the City of Toronto on the program design details of the Building Faster Fund including eligible expenses and ways to track progress”.
They’ve announced it, they throw some dollars at it, now they’re going to design the program. What I’m suggesting with this motion here is is that we just get out in front of it, and that they actually design the program how it really should intended to be, and that’s measure the municipality for what they control, and what they can’t control, build accountabilities to the private sector.
The big talk right now is is inflation and yes, certainly interest rates are high, but interest rates have been high before. What the difference is, is the principle on these houses is astronomical. For example, you know on the resale market we’re seeing houses and I know an example right now where the house sold, it’s being rented, and then there’s a sub lease on the rental. Students are living there, so they’re overpaying the true costs, both the owner and the renter get an income.
Then we have a newly constructed two-bedroom two-bath home, 1400 square feet, unfinished basement in our city selling for $679,000. It’s not the interest it’s the problem, it’s the astronomical principle on that property that is making it unaffordable.
If we don’t see an increase in supply, and I don’t disagree with what the provincial government’s saying, what I have an issue with, and what I think we need to look at, is do we throw the suggestions forward in terms of how to make this program fair.
The parliament in 2019 passed the National Housing Strategy and they’ve made housing right. We have a legal obligation, I would argue a moral obligation, to ensure that we’re doing everything we possibly can to get houses built, but we need the private sector to build as well.
I think we’re at a turning point where the days of buying real estate because you don’t want to invest your money in the markets or in the stock markets and just build your wealth through real estate, that’s going to come to an end. Everybody’s sitting on that retirement nest egg if you will. Well if I sell my home you know that will fund my retirement.
Well who’s going to buy your home? The next generation coming behind us cannot afford the down payment and the mortgage payment for a house, so when we see people wandering our street with no place to go, and no place to live it is only going to get worse.
I think we’re all singing the same song in terms of building more houses, but we can’t play footsie around the corners in terms of how do we get this done. I’m simply suggesting here that the province needs to measure us – and we can certainly be accountable, for what we can control – but we need the provincial government to put in stringent guidelines to get the private sector to build.
The next thing that needs to happen quite frankly and it’s not in this motion, but I think it’s important to say, is that the senior levels of government need to invest considerably in affordable housing.
If we don’t and allow this so-called market to dictate it problem is, is if the market price is this high and we’ve seen it over the pandemic, everybody’s buying this high. The market doesn’t want to buy it, ask any buyer do you really want to pay $700,000, or would you rather pay $400,000? When you hear the private sector say: “well this is what the market’s calling for”, well if you set the bar there and you’ve got a scarcity commodity in terms of a place to live, then that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
What I’m asking here is that we just look at the program, have the province – look they’re suggesting even in their own letter the Minister is going to ask AMO in terms of thoughts on program design – this is simply suggesting that we throw in two cents here in terms of providing input from the City of Belleville’s perspective on this still to be designed fund.
