Municipalities need to ‘pick up their socks’ on building housing, Doug Ford says

Premier Doug Ford is shown during a media availability in Toronto on Oct. 31, 2024.

Premier Doug Ford says that some municipalities need to “pick up their socks” when it comes to getting housing built.

Ford made the comment to reporters during a media availability on Thursday morning, one day after his government’s fall economic statement showed that Ontario is no longer expected to hit its housing target for this year.

Housing start projections for the next several years were also revised downward from what was included in the last Ontario budget in March.

“There are some municipalities that want to build and they get the (provincial housing) funds but there are other municipalities that just won’t build so they need to step it up,” Ford said. “It is all 444 municipalities that have to get permits and they have to look at their development charges too. In some areas development charges are 30 or 40 per cent of the cost of a house, condo or townhome and that is unacceptable. They just want to tax them (developers) to death.”

Ontario has set an ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes by 2031 but it has struggled to reach its targets in recent years amid a broader slowdown in the housing market that has coincided with elevated interest rates.

In the fall economic statement released on Wednesday, the government indicated that it now only expects to hit 81,300 new homes this year based on an average of private sector forecasts. That is down slightly from the 87,900 new homes that were expected at the time of the spring budget and remains well off the 150,000 new homes per year that Ontario would need to hit to reach its overall goal.

The government is forecasting that new housing starts will increase in coming years, with the strongest growth expected in 2027 when more than 95,000 new homes are projected to be built, Speaking with reporters, Ford said that he does remain “confident” that Ontario will reach its goals, noting that “it is still a number of years away,”

But he said that interest rates “need to drop” and some municipalities need to be more willing partners.

“We need their support to continue building,” he said. “We don’t sign off on permits, the cities sign permits so they need to pick up their socks.”