York Region councillors clashed over the idea that reducing development charges would result in more affordable housing.
Council passed a motion proposed by Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca for a report on the applications of the region’s development charge bylaw by the end of the first quarter of this year, with options that could be taken to potentially increase housing affordability.
Del Duca suggested a reduction in development charges, which are intended to support the cost of municipal infrastructure required for new developments, would increase affordability of housing. Debate emerged around that idea and whether it would be appropriate, with several members of council opposed to the concept, concerned about the cost.
“I certainly didn’t respect so much fear-mongering from my colleagues about how the sky might fall,” Del Duca responded. “My daughters are 17 and 13. If I get to the end of my professional journey and I’m looking at them and I tell them that when they were facing the greatest housing affordability crisis in decades, and I was the mayor of a city and I was a member of regional council, and the best I could come up with was writing another letter to the province or the feds — that that's the best I could come up with, with the tools that I have? — I’ll be ashamed of myself.”
Development charges have been a frequent point of debate in housing affordability discussions. Developers are required to pay municipalities these charges to help pay for infrastructure and other community growth that comes with more residences, and there is an assumption the cost is transferred to home buyers. The province significantly cut development charges with Bill 23, reducing that burden on developers in a bid to lower housing prices downstream. Many municipalities have raised concern about this approach, saying that this makes needed infrastructure tougher to pay for and passes the burden onto taxpayers.
Newmarket Mayor John Taylor said he was open to discussing all options for housing affordability, though he was skeptical about the idea of cutting development charges across the board.
“I’d be very interested in some targeted DC cuts,” he said. “The amount of money it would take to actually create housing that’s more affordable across the entire spectrum far exceeds our capability. But I do think we probably have the fiscal capability to address, in a different way, some housing types.”
Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas said over 90 municipalities have asked upper levels of government to look at redistributing taxes to help municipalities, namely through new home sales.
“Until the province and the feds step up and redistribute those funds to us as municipalities, then we can turn around, lower DCs and standardize from right across the board. Otherwise, it can’t be done,” Mrakas said.
Regional treasurer Laura Mirabella said staff were already looking at development charge policies and interest policy, and they could look at the impact of further reductions and what the offsetting implications would be.
Taylor also took umbrage with Del Duca saying the concerns of other councillors was “fear-mongering.”
“Fear-mongering is a tactic. Labelling something as fear-mongering is a tactic,” Taylor said. “To suggest your children, we can turn that around to say what about your children? If they live in Vaughan, the future generation that’s already feeling very put on, when they pick up this $2 (hundred billion), $3 (hundred billion), $500 billion debt 20 years from now that’s left behind because we didn’t collect DCs?
“I’m saying let’s have the conversation, let’s get the facts,” Taylor added. “I hope we can start 2025 and have a respectful dialogue about housing affordability.”
