Build More Homes, Protect Ontario!
More Neighbours Toronto, Make Housing Affordable Ottawa and More Homes Mississauga congratulate the Hon. Rob Flack on his success in the recent election and welcome him in his new role as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. We look forward to working with him to alleviate the challenges in our housing economy. To that end, we have written an open letter encouraging the Ontario government to adopt key measures from the Housing Affordability Task Force Report to strengthen our province and eliminate the barriers to building at this critical moment.
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Hon. Rob Flack
College Park
17th Flr, 777 Bay St
Toronto, Ontario M7A 2J3
To Hon. Rob Flack, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing,
Congratulations on your recent election victory, and on your appointment as the new Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing under Premier Doug Ford.
As you know, housing affordability is a top priority for the people of Ontario.
Our province is falling far behind the target of 1.5 million net new homes by 2031, jeopardizing the important work being done by this government to Protect Ontario.
Analysis done by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario1 shows that the province is missing its target and will likely do so into the future. In addition, research by Dr. Mike Moffatt2 shows that municipalities are not planning for the homes they agreed to under their housing pledges to the province.
There is a significant mismatch between housing demand and housing supply in Ontario, which has caused both rent and mortgage costs to skyrocket over the past decade.
Thankfully, the Ontario PC government put forward a roadmap to fix the housing crisis – the Housing Affordability Task Force report.
This is a serious plan, and we believe this is still the right plan to make housing affordable in Ontario.
Unfortunately, the most ambitious parts of this plan have not been implemented.
As a result, housing starts have plummeted, building investment has cratered, and our housing market is looking more and more dire every day.
This has a real world impact on Ontario families – many of whom are struggling to pay their rents or mortgages.
This also has a real world impact on the competitiveness of Ontario businesses. Our businesses struggle to attract talent when the cost-of-living in our major cities is so high.
Young families, in particular, are fleeing our cities for lower cost of living areas. Our best and brightest are leaving for other provinces because they can no longer afford to call Ontario home.
This was a crisis in 2022, when the HATF report was first published. In 2025 – with the added threat of a trade war with the United States, we are flirting with disaster.
Ontario jobs are at risk – which means rents and mortgages are at risk of default. We even heard earlier this month that some banks are making it harder for steelworkers to get mortgages3.
Housing costs are already unaffordable – how are families going to manage when job losses and increased costs from tariffs hit us hard?
Thankfully, in the face of a crisis, there is always opportunity.
If we truly want to Protect Ontario, it starts by building in Ontario.
We can adopt the recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force report. We can supercharge our homebuilding industry, creating tens of thousands of good jobs for skilled workers.
We can make housing affordable in Ontario, bringing young families back to our cities. We can help people afford to live in the cities they work, taking massive strain off our roads, highways, and transit systems.
A plan for housing affordability is also a plan for good jobs, higher productivity, better quality of life, and lower costs for municipalities and the province.
It’s a plan to Protect Ontario.
We understand that in the past, this government has assessed the Housing Affordability Task Force, and worried there was some political risk in adopting some of the measures.
We also understand that while the vast majority of people are broadly supportive of measures to build more housing, some in certain communities are reluctant to change in their own backyards.
And finally, we understand that the major problem with housing affordability comes from our big cities, like Toronto, other cities in the GTA, and Ottawa. Growing housing costs across our province are a direct result of people fleeing our big cities for lower cost-of-living areas.
With that context, we believe these are the two most impactful changes you could make to make housing affordable here in Ontario:
- Establish provincewide zoning standards in Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs). Eliminate maximum heights, angular planes, floor space index, shadow rules, and other red tape restrictions that limit development within a 1 km radius of MTSAs. These standards should be extremely permissive, broad, firm, and free of loopholes.
- Eliminate or radically reduce development charges, community benefit charges, and the alphabet soup of housing taxes levied by our major cities. These taxes can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to housing projects, driving up rents and mortgage costs. Partner with the federal government to provide sustainable funding for capital projects in our major cities.
These changes will have the biggest impact, in the fastest period of time. But there are many other barriers, and we look forward to working with you on other issues like building codes, permitting, and land use.
Making these changes will set Ontario back on the path towards housing affordability – and create tens of thousands of direct jobs in the process. It will make our province stronger as we step up to the immense challenges we face in a potential trade war with the United States.
We believe you are up to the challenge. I hope you will prove us right.
We would like to request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss these issues and help you move forward towards our shared goal of making housing more affordable.
Let’s get it done together – and Protect Ontario.
Sincerely,
Leigh Honeywell, Chair, Make Housing Affordable Ottawa
Eric Lombardi, President, More Neighbours Toronto
Kelly Singh, Executive Director, More Homes Mississauga
1 https://globalnews.ca/news/10869767/ontario-housing-starts-fao-report-2024/
2 https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/development-charges-are-artificially