Ontario housing target out of reach without zoning reform, board warns
“Ontario’s housing problem is now a delivery problem. Governments have set ambitious targets, but targets do not build homes. The Province is well behind the pace it needs because the system that regulates housing is complicated, fragmented, hard to navigate, and unpredictable,” the report said.
Why is Ontario’s zoning system slowing housing supply?
“Ontario doesn’t have one housing market; it has hundreds. Every municipality writes its own zoning bylaws, each with its own terminology and rules on features like building heights, parking requirements, lot size and dozens of other factors,” the report said.
Toronto shows the scale of the problem. Its harmonized 2013 bylaw has five low-rise residential designations. More than 20,000 parcels still fall under pre-amalgamation bylaws, however, which pushes the effective count to at least 35.
The board’s main zoning proposals are:
- a provincial zoning code
- as-of-right permissions for townhouses and multiplexes
- a “five for five” cap, allowing no more than five zoning categories for residential buildings of five storeys or less
For the building code, it calls for single-stair buildings up to six storeys and smaller elevators in smaller buildings. A Neptis Foundation study cited in the report estimated that targeted code changes could save up to $174,000 on a hypothetical four-storey project.
