Housing Affordability Task Force Report and Call to Re-examine Hospital Capital Funding

Housing Affordability Task Force Report Released

The province has now released the Housing Affordability Task Force report.  It contains the Task Force’s recommendations to increase the supply of market housing to address the housing crisis.

The Task Force report’s recommendations include five main areas to quickly increase the supply of market housing, to meet a goal of adding 1.5 million homes over the next 10 years. These areas include:

• making changes to planning policies and zoning to allow for greater density and increase the variety of housing;
• reduce and streamline urban design rules to lower costs of development;
• depoliticize the approvals process to address NIMBYism and cut red tape to speed up housing;
• prevent abuse of the appeal process and address the backlog at the Ontario Land Tribunal by prioritizing cases that increase housing; and
• align efforts between all levels of government to incentivize more housing.

Additionally, the Task Force report makes other recommendations to increase housing supply over the long-term, including to digitize and modernize the approvals and planning process, grow the skilled labour workforce, and encourage new pathways to home ownership.

The province will be consulting further with municipal governments, the public, and the housing industry. In the next 10 days, AMO will be submitting our consolidated housing affordability recommendations, as approved by the AMO Board of Directors, to Minister Clark and the province for their consideration on their next steps on housing affordability.

Call to Re-examine Hospital Capital Funding

AMO’s 2022 Pre-Budget Submission included a number of municipal priorities for the upcoming provincial budget including re-examining the local funding of provincial hospitals. The submission highlights the impact of the “local share” capital donations in funding provincial hospital construction and expansion. The “local share” requirements have fiscal implications for municipal governments pressured to fill funding gaps to get hospital projects off the ground. AMO’s submission calls on the provincial government to re-evaluate this approach.

If your municipal council would like to add its support, please see the resolution for your council’s consideration.