Boosting supply is no. 1 job, Ontario’s housing minister says

Thestar.com
December 4, 2018
Tess Kalinowski

The short supply of housing driving the cost of shelter ever higher is the most pressing problem confronting Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing. But there is no scarcity of competing voices telling Steve Clark how to address the crisis.

Still, Clark wants to make sure he’s heard all the ideas and arguments, especially innovative solutions.

Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing, Steve Clark, says he doesn’t want to bigfoot municipalities in addressing the housing crisis, saying collaboration is his preference

Ryerson’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development held a conference Friday offering advice to the region’s newly elected politicians.

Some recommendations from the speakers -- academics, economists, planners and developers -- are familiar: Reduce planning timelines; lay the pipes so developable land is serviced for builders; sweeten the pot with tax relief to entice rental construction.

Other proposals -- permitting taller timber construction and making it easier to build basement apartments in established neighbourhoods -- have received less air time.

In an interview with the Star in his College Park office Thursday, Clark steadfastly refused to pre-empt the outcome of consultations launched last Wednesday for his government’s Housing Supply Action Plan, expected in June.

He also is aware of the jitters of environmentalists who question the Progressive Conservative government’s commitment to the Greenbelt, the two-million-acre swath of protected agricultural and environmentally sensitive land ringing the Toronto-Niagara region.

A former mayor of Brockville, first elected to Queen’s Park in the eastern Ontario riding of Leeds-Grenville in 2010, Clark repeatedly stresses that his mandate extends beyond the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area, geographically and ideologically. But he acknowledges there is wide overlap when it comes to some issues.

“It would have been a surprise to me at the start of the last election that in rural Leeds-Grenville I would actually be fielding questions about the Greenbelt,” Clark said. “But it was an issue that came up and obviously it came up in pretty well every riding.”

The Greenbelt was a prominent issue after video surfaced of a campaigning Doug Ford telling developers that the protected area would be opened up under his government. Ford became premier after walking the comments back.

In his office, Clark showed off an author’s gift -- a coffee-table book about the Greenbelt by Burkhard Mausberg, founding CEO of the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation.

“The conversation I’ve had with many stakeholders is, how can we enhance the Greenbelt. How can we have that conversation when sometimes the voices compete,” he said.

What he won’t say is whether “enhance” means “expand” -- only that he wants to better understand the Greenbelt Council’s work plan. He has met with its chair David Crombie.

“I’m going to keep an open mind,” Clark said.

He stressed there are other development opportunities to explore before loosening any sprawl restrictions.

“I believe we should be looking at some of the properties we presently control,” he said, citing Toronto Mayor John Tory’s commitment to building affordable housing on 10 surplus city sites still to be announced.

“I’d like to talk to my cabinet colleagues about looking at some of our available land that is in the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services hands and I think we have a federal lands program. I think we have to send a signal at all three levels of government that if we’ve got available lands that could be used for housing projects that we need to work collaboratively together,” Clark said.

“We can’t have a discussion about housing supply without talking about (housing) mix,” he said. That includes a discussion of the “missing middle” -- the 70 per cent of Toronto that is zoned deliberately to keep denser housing forms out of established neighbourhoods that are well served by transit, schools, hospitals and community centres.

It’s not his preference to have the province bigfoot municipalities in the way it unilaterally cut Toronto council in half, he said, adding that collaboration is always his preference.

The minister has already taken some heat on the government’s decision to remove rent controls on brand new units. But there are other issues he is championing in the rental sector, he said, including pushing Attorney General Caroline Mulroney to appoint more adjudicators to alleviate the backlog at the Ontario Landlord Tenant Board that rules on tenant disputes.

“I’ve pleaded my case so I hope something happens,” Clark said.

Four years isn’t a much time to build housing when the planning process takes 10 to 15 years before a developer can even start on the application process, he admits. But that’s the goal. He wants people to say that his government was able to hasten development times, lower costs and he wants landlords and tenants to feel heard.

“I’m going to look for check marks in some degree in all those.”