Housing for All and Ending Homelessness

Doug Ford has failed on his promise to build 1.5 million new homes. Ontario currently builds fewer homes per person than any other province. It was the only province where housing starts declined last year. As a result of Ford’s inaction, the housing crisis has worsened over the last 8 years. Homelessness has visibly increased in cities across Ontario, high rents take too much of our paycheques, and the dream of buying a first home is getting further and further out of reach for too many families.

A Lee Fairclough Liberal government will take a comprehensive approach to make sure every Ontarian has access to a home they can afford.

Lee’s Plan

Building New Housing

• Establish Ontario Homes to build new housing using public land and low-cost government financing. Ontario Homes will work with Build Canada Homes, the federal government’s public builder and financier, through a shared project queue and joint land banking so both governments can deliver more homes, faster. The program will lower the cost of housing for all Ontarians and keep construction and skilled-trades workers on the job during economic downturns.
• Commit to a target of 150,000 new homes a year, the pace the Housing Affordability Task Force called for, and the Ford government gave up on.
• Bring the province back to funding its fair share of affordable housing. The majority of affordable projects being built in Ontario rely on federal or municipal funding. Ontario only funds 13% of the province’s subsidized housing programs.
• Commit to establishing a new fiscal framework with municipalities that provides predictable, long-term provincial infrastructure funding. This funding will offset development charges on new housing and allow municipalities to plan responsibly for growth, delivering the pipes, roads and other infrastructure new homes need before they are built. Lower costs will make more projects viable at lower price points, bringing down the cost of new homes. Any changes will leave municipalities whole in both the short and long term.
• Prioritize supporting new schools, community centres, and social services as a part of infrastructure for new growth.
• Require municipalities to permit mid-rise buildings on major streets and around rapid transit, and legalize missing middle housing across Ontario.
• Legalize single stair buildings up to six storeys by reforming Ontario’s Building Code.
• Promote modular home construction to bring down construction costs, create jobs, and deliver housing, faster. As a public builder Ontario Homes will provide low-cost financing for modular manufacturing and project financing. The province will also update provincial regulations to remove barriers to modular construction.
• Repair the homes we already have. Eighty-one percent of Ontario’s purpose-built rental housing was built before 1980, and nearly 91,000 social and affordable units are now rated in poor condition, more than in any other province. We will restore the province as a capital funding partner with predictable multi-year repair funding for service managers.
• Provide low-cost financing and incentives to combine building repairs with deep energy retrofits. The older stock of buildings is among the province’s largest energy users, and retrofits help reduce emissions and tenants’ utility bills.

Lowering Rents

• Restore rent control for all apartments in Ontario, including those built after 2018, while working with rental builders on counteracting policy incentives to boost rental housing supply.
• Eliminate unfair Above the Guideline Rent Increases (AGIs) for basic repairs. Repairing a balcony or replacing a boiler should be the cost of doing business for a landlord.
• Increase penalties and fines for all bad faith evictions, including landlord own use, renovictions, and demovictions, and publish a list of the annual worst landlords in Ontario.
• Hire additional Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) enforcement officers to ensure RTA violations are applied consistently for both tenants and landlords.
• Fix the Landlord Tenant Board and hire more adjudicators to clear the enormous case backlog that Doug Ford’s government created, to ensure it works fairly for both landlords and tenants, with a target of cutting case and hearing timelines in half.

Solving Homelessness

The alarming rise in homelessness across Ontario is an abject failure of the Ford Government. People sleeping on our streets, on public transit, or in our emergency rooms strains our public systems and hurts economic growth. Evidence shows it is much cheaper to house someone than to leave them cycling through our hospitals, shelters and jails. It costs roughly $50,000 a year to support a person experiencing chronic homelessness through shelters and emergency services, but only half that to house them in supportive housing.

My government will set clear goals around ending homelessness. Municipalities across Ontario are working to solve homelessness, but the province is absent. This is a problem we can solve – countries such as Finland have achieved a 72% reduction in a single year. We need concrete action and focused targets, and the Ontario government must be a committed partner with municipalities.

Solving homelessness means stopping people from losing their housing in the first place, and helping people who have experienced homelessness get their lives back on track. Many people living on our streets are struggling with chronic addiction, and they require tailored, wraparound supports to meet their needs. That starts with making publicly funded treatment available. Right now, people seeking treatment voluntarily are forced to wait months for a funded bed.

People experiencing homelessness deserve dignity, not criminalization and blame. Ontario communities have always come together to help a neighbour in trouble. A Lee Fairclough government will:

• Prevent homelessness by strengthening income supports, including ODSP and Ontario Works, so that a job loss, illness or rent increase does not push people out of their homes.
• Address chronic homelessness by adopting a housing first approach across the province, delivering long-term housing stability and wraparound supports for those who need it.
• Partner with hospitals, non-profits, and social service agencies to build supportive housing on public land for those struggling with mental health issues and addiction.
• Eliminate wait times for publicly funded addiction treatment so people can begin their recovery the moment they seek help. We will expand treatment beds and increase funding for community-based mental health agencies to meet rising demand.