The Town of Newmarket wants action to address idle developments, but Ontario builders pushed back on its ideas for legislative changes.
Newmarket council passed a resolution April 19 to advocate for the province to consider sunset clauses on idle developments. It came in response to the More Homes For Everyone Act, which partially targets municipalities and will force them to return application fees if they do not decide on developments within a legislated time frame.
But Ontario Home Builders Association president Bob Schickedanz said he is concerned with the idea of that approach. He said there are several reasons why a development might remain idle, such as developer resources or awaiting service connections. But he said it does not accomplish anything to close the book on an application.
“There’s no real value in terminating approvals. These are projects that are already within the urban envelope, within the settlement boundary. If projects (are cancelled), they’re going to come back to the table and go through the system again,” Schickedanz said. “Housing supply is needed. People are looking desperately. So, eliminating approvals is really counter to that.”
The town said five applications have had zoning or subdivision approvals for more than three years but have not yet proceeded to construction. These include projects on Yonge Street, Gorham Street, Old Main Street and Silken Laumann Drive.
The new provincial legislation in part targets municipal processes for holding up development. But Mayor John Taylor has criticized the approach and said development holdups can also come from developers themselves not responding promptly.
“There is an opportunity to accelerate housing in Ontario by holding developers responsible for moving forward with developments after that have been approved through the use of a sunset clause,” Newmarket director of planning Jason Unger said.
But Shickedanz said municipal processing is a “significant hurdle,” and a development process can take 10 to 15 years from application start to people moving in.
“There’s always a reason why a certain file may be problematic,” he said. “But I think we have to stand back and see, if the process takes in the order of 10 of 15 years, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the process.”
The federal government is also examining municipal development processes, with its budget promising billions in funding to help accelerate them.
Shickedanz said the industry wants faster processing and response times, but he is unsure of the provincial act’s approach to force municipalities to refund fees.
“Our industry and our members aren’t looking to get fees back,” he said. “They aren’t a huge portion of the overall development proposal from a monetary standpoint. What’s important is a timely response. That we are very concerned with.”
But he said the act does feature helpful measures and promises of more funding to speed processing up.
Still, he said the association will be advocating for all provincial parties in the election to find more ways to increase housing stock and cut down on the bureaucracy.
“We as an industry are getting increasingly frustrated with how difficult it is to do the job that we love to do,” he said. “We’re ready, willing, and able to do it, and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and do the job that needs to be done.”
