York Region councillors grilled the development sector on progressing building permits but found common ground on the need for purpose-built rental.
Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) GTA president and chief executive officer David Wilkes urged the region’s housing task force Sept. 7 to work with the development industry toward addressing housing affordability. He said the task force should focus on the speed of permit-ready approvals, not get too lost in the details of developments and review land-use policies as barriers to entry.
But as municipal governments face scrutiny over their regulations, Mayor John Taylor said there should be a discussion about incentivizing developers to speed up and get building once they get zoning and site plan approvals.
“Isn’t it fair, and isn’t it time, that if municipalities are being held to a standard and being given penalties, that we do the same for the building industry?” Taylor asked.
Municipalities have taken umbrage with the province reducing development charges that help pay for infrastructure. Taylor has also expressed concern with the provincial emphasis on municipalities taking action to get more built, while noting developments can often sit idle due to developer decisions. Taylor suggested working on a tool to incentivize or require developers to build faster post-approval.
The concern about projects getting approval and then not getting built has occurred for a long time, Wilkes said. He added that it is something he would be willing to have a further discussion about in the interest of finding a solution.
“Let’s get the facts around this, let’s agree to the facts, let’s have a conversation between our region and the industry,” Wilkes said. “That’s a very important discussion.”
The presentation from Wilkes suggested other ideas for addressing housing, such as reducing regulations, allowing more buildings on agricultural land and the reduction of development charges. Wilkes offered further praise for the region’s system of deferring development charges for some high-density projects.
But councillors were keen on further grilling regarding solutions to spur developers to move more quickly.
Taylor said developers will go through the steps to get things out of the way for the future or perhaps to improve the value of their land before sale, but it takes time away from busy planning departments.
“Every year, every municipality has multiple applications like that,” Taylor said.
Taylor also pressed on development charges and suggested that builders should be more concerned with municipalities not having enough to fund infrastructure. But Wilkes said developers believe in reducing charges to reduce home prices and that the federal government should help fund municipal infrastructure to allow for new development.
Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Iain Lovatt cited a couple of developments in his municipality, one with 500 homes approved in 2014 and no shovel near it, and another one with sewage allocation assigned for 2,000 units. He said they put in place a “use it or lose it” in two years policy for allocation but got blowback from developers’ lawyers doing that.
“We have to drive permits to get pulled in order for houses to get built. Infrastructure in a smaller municipality like Stouffville is being held hostage,” Lovatt said.
Rental needed
However, there was common ground regarding incentivizing rentals. Wilkes said BILD is hoping to drop the HST from purpose-built rental development, with it not being a popular type of project at the moment.
“The business model of (purpose-built rental) doesn’t work with the current model of HST,” he said.
Wilkes asked the region to join them in advocating with upper levels of government to drop this tax for purpose-built rental specifically.
The idea got some positive reception. Taylor said he is 100 per cent aligned with the idea and the need to focus on purpose-built rental.
“I’m really hopeful ourselves, BILD, the province and the federal government can come together on a really targeted, thoughtful, data-driven policy set to dramatically incentivize purpose-built rental,” he said. “It really is the Number 1 need in the GTA.”
