Brampton is getting over $25.5M from the Ontario government for making a good dent in its provincially mandated housing target.
Premier Doug Ford announced the funding at a press conference on Friday morning, where he told reporters that Brampton broke ground on more than 7,000 new homes last year, achieving over 80% of their target for 2023.
“These funds can be used by the city for infrastructure projects that lay the groundwork for more housing and community development,” Ford said. “Brampton’s progress in building homes is just absolutely incredible. And so is this mayor and the council — they're getting it done. We need other municipalities to follow their lead.”
The funds will come out of the Building Faster Fund, a three-year, $1.2B program unveiled by the Province back in August. The fund is designed to benefit municipalities that reach at least 80% of their provincially assigned housing target for the year.
Though figures from the province from earlier this month indicated Brampton had only achieved 35% of its target for 2023, it would seem that, somehow, the tides have changed. The Province’s housing tracker currently shows that Brampton has achieved 85% of its target for 2023, which was set at 8,287 new homes for the year.
“We are very much determined to hit our housing goal that was established by the province: 113,000 new residential units over the next 10 years. And we don't want to just sign a pledge, we want to hit that pledge and exceed it,” said Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, who was also in attendance at Friday’s press conference. “In 2023, Brampton approved 12,432 new housing units. That doesn't even include the 4,494 net new additional residential units that were registered. We are making huge strides.”
Friday’s announcement comes just a day after the Province announced that Toronto will get $114M from the Building Faster Fund for exceeding its target by 51%. For 2023, Toronto’s target was 20,900 new homes, which it sailed past, breaking ground on 31,656 new housing units over the course of the year. As such, $38M of the $114M is a bonus for exceeding the target.
According to a press release, the Province will be issuing rewards for all municipalities that have exceeded or made meaningful progress towards their targets in the coming weeks.
The announcement also says that any unspent funding will be made available to all municipalities “for housing-enabling infrastructure” through an application process. In addition, the Province says 10% of the Building Faster Fund has been set aside to help small, rural, and northern municipalities increase their housing supply.
