After floating a draft of it in the spring, the Ontario government has unveiled its latest Provincial Planning Statement (PPS), which builds on the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act and includes a series of requirements and recommendations geared at getting more housing built across the the province. It's been tweaked slightly from its 2020 version, although much of the material remains more or less the same.
In any case, the new PPS will go into effect on October 20, and includes a requirement for municipal planning authorities to “establish and implement” their own targets for affordable housing, including housing that caters to both low- and moderate-income households. Further emphasis is put on setting boundaries for major transit station areas on higher order transit corridors, and building more density around those transit areas, as well as shopping mall and retail plaza sites — also at the discretion of municipal planning staff.
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Paul Calandra spoke to the new PPS at the annual Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference on Tuesday, underscoring that, in part, it empowers municipalities to plan for new housing supply as they see fit.
“With this new planning statement, we are giving you, municipalities, the tools and the flexibility that you need to build more homes,” Calandra said on Tuesday. “It recognizes that municipalities understand local challenges and priorities when it comes to building homes, and that the types of homes that are needed to be built in your communities, it is you who know best what you should be building in your communities for your residents.”
Ontario Housing Minister Paul Calandra spoke to the updated Provincial Planning Statement at a conference on Tuesday.(Paul Calandra/X)
Though urban planner, architect, and Smart Density co-founder Naama Blonder doesn’t have a qualm with keeping the onus on municipal governments to set minimums for affordable housing, she also warns that putting words on (proverbial) paper tends to mean very little in the grand scheme of things. “I know that one of the challenges with municipalities is that those units eventually don't get built, and we see that in the market today,” she says.
In Blonder’s view, the PPS fails to address bigger pain-points when it comes to getting new affordable housing off the ground, including the fact that projects these days aren’t able to pencil out. Building is simply too expensive right now. In Toronto, for example, Blonder points to increased development charges and soaring construction costs as two major “hurdles” preventing new housing from getting off the ground.
Richard Lyall, President of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario, is in a similar camp, expressing that while the new PPS demonstrates that the province is putting emphasis in the right places and “fine tuning” its planning directives with respect to affordable housing and otherwise, it doesn't address the systemic issues preventing housing from being built in an efficient manner (or at all).
“One of the big problems we have in Ontario is that too much authority for some pretty basic planning things are left in the hands of municipalities,” he says. He points to Toronto as an example, where the City is yet to resolve planning issues surrounding the use of angular planes and restriction on floor plates in apartment buildings. “We're still dancing around with this stuff that's been identified as an issue forever — and certainly, for the last five years.”
The PPS additionally fails to pose a solution for getting housing off the ground quicker, Lyall says. “There's some incremental, nice things in there, but it's still not hitting the big stuff. It's not hitting the chronic inefficiencies in our approvals process, it's not touching the excess costs that have been imposed on new homebuyers and renters in the last 15 years. I mean, they are extraordinary.“
“It's not hitting the chronic inefficiencies in our approvals process, it's not touching the excess costs that have been imposed on new homebuyers and renters in the last 15 years. I mean, they are extraordinary.“
As mentioned, the new PPS directs municipal authorities to create more density close to major transit, including TTC, GO, light rail, and rapid transit bus stations, and includes a guideline for delineating boundaries within a 500- to 800-metre radius of transit as to “maximizes the number of potential transit users that are within walking distance of the station.” Within those boundaries, municipalities are instructed to plan for “minimum density targets” of 200 residents and jobs for sites served by subways, 160 residents and jobs for sites served by light rail or bus rapid transit, or 150 residents and jobs for sites served by commuter or regional rail.
The PPS also encourages municipalities to plan for more housing and density on “commercially-designated retail lands,” including shopping mall and plaza sites.
Executive Vice President of Sevoy Developments, Jane Renwick, says that these are directives development sector stakeholders can get behind. These are “key parts of community building,” she tells STOREYS. “Malls need critical mass, transit needs critical mass, and we bring the critical mass through multi-residential development. So I think those things have always gone hand in hand, and it's nice to see the acknowledgement from the province.”
But again, putting a directive in writing is one thing, and making it happen is another matter entirely.
“I think the redevelopment of the mall is a very tricky thing. And I would say that government policies are always sweeping statements, and then it’s left to industry, both private and public, to figure out the rest,” says Renwick. “There are complexities with mall redevelopments because of long term-leases, and those long-term leases have leases over parking spaces. You have to unwind leases and work with the tenants, so it takes a sophisticated group to do it right, and I think, in part, that's maybe why the redevelopment of the mall has lagged a little bit.”
